 My husband loves almond joy candy bars the chocolate the almonds and the coconut and So for Valentine's Day, I like to make him some homemade almond joy bars Lots of coconut almonds chocolate and also a lot of sweetened condensed milk and powdered sugar They're loaded with sugar and loaded with calories So I finally came up with a more helpful version that still fulfills his craving for almond joy bars So he's gonna be so surprised when he gets these for Valentine's Day I've got my ingredients ready to go I took two cups of almonds just raw almonds and I toasted them on a baking sheet in a 350 degree oven For about six to eight minutes just until you can smell the fragrance and they're starting to turn color Take them out put them on a plate to cool Then also ahead of time I took half cup of shredded coconut and this happens to be unsweetened coconut Put it in a skillet and stirred it over medium heat until it just started to turn golden brown And then I put it on the plate to cool now These little almond joy bites or bites of joy I like to call them have a natural sweetener no sugar But dates and I like to use the medjool dates which are the larger dates because they're really moist and creamy And caramely they have pits must take the pits out before you prepare these So you can see that a deglet date is the more traditional date And it's a lot smaller and it doesn't have all that creamy inside that the medjool dates have and you can find them in the produce Department in most grocery stores So I've got two cups of the medjool dates and I'm going to start putting things into my food processor So first in go the toasted almonds then I'm going to put my dates Two cups of dates and I also have half cup of coconut that I have not toasted So that's going to go in at the same time Along with about a quarter cup of cocoa powder and use a nice quality cocoa powder So you get a really good chocolatey flavor and a half teaspoon of salt so I'm going to put that in and Start pulsing it until it gets nice and crumbly When it just gets a real crumbly consistency I'm going to add three tablespoons of almond butter also I'll put in one tablespoon of pure vanilla extract and once again. I'm going to blend it up I like to use a portion scooper, but if you don't have one don't worry just pinch up a bunch and roll it into a ball and Then I'm going to take the toasted coconut that half cup of toasted coconut that I Prepared ahead of time and I'm going to roll the balls right in the toasted coconut And you'll need to press the coconut probably to the balls a little bit so that it sticks on and There you have a perfect Bite of joy. Happy Valentine's Day. I'm Stu Dodin sharing good food for good life 365