Fruit Sweetening Paste (Pure Fruit Sweetener)

Fruit Sweetening Paste – Pure Fruit Sweetener

I will be the first to admit that there’s a lot of healthified baked good recipes/treats on this site (and many more to come!). I’ve gotten some criticism because of it, but truthfully I like having healthier, wholesome options when I want that occasional treat.

And for the record, I do not eat paleo-fied cookies or cupcakes everyday. I’ve been eating paleo (real food, grain free, primal, whatever you want to call it) for a few years and in my opinion, allowing for these real food treats in your diet makes eating healthy much more sustainable.  And let’s face it, it makes it more enjoyable, too.

But peruse around this site and you’ll see that even my treat recipes are not loaded with a crazy amount of natural sweeteners like pure raw honey and maple syrup. I use as little sweetener as I possibly can get away with, while still maintaining a great flavor. 

Even natural sweeteners like pure raw honey and maple syrup only contain trace amounts of minerals and vitamins compared with nutrient dense fruit.

That’s why I love using real fruit to sweeten my baked goods as much as possible. Fruit contains an abundant source of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants and fiber and is a wonderful source of energy for our cells.

And this fruit sweetening paste is pure fruit! You can use it in place of sweetening ingredients in recipes like honey and maple syrup. Plus, it’s super easy to make!

Fruit Sweetening Paste Recipe

 Makes one jarful

Ingredients:

Use one or a combination of the following:

dates, pits removed

dried apricots

figs

raisins

any other dried fruit

DIRECTIONS:

Fill a jar ¾ of the way full with your fruits (make sure to leave about 2 inches of room from the top). There’s no right or wrong combination of fruit.

Fill the jar with enough water to cover the fruit. Stick the jar in the refrigerator and refrigerate at least 8 hours. (I do this in the evening and let it hang out in the fridge overnight) After it’s been in the fridge for at least 8 hours, take it out and drain the liquid in a bowl or cup. Add the fruit only to your blender or food processor. Add a few tablespoons of the drained liquid – just enough to process the fruit. Blend or process a few minutes until very smooth. You may need to keep adding a bit of the reserved water at a time – add just enough to process it and enough to make it smooth.

Once it’s thoroughly blended and smooth, put it in a jar and store in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

It will keep for about 2 months (but you will probably use it up before then – it’s yummy stuff!).

You can use this as a substitute for honey and maple syrup in a lot of recipes. It’s not quite as sweet as honey and maple syrup, so you may need to use a bit more paste than the amount of honey and maple syrup in the recipes. You can even do half honey, half fruit paste (something I do a lot).  

These are some of my favorite recipes to use the fruit paste:

Breakfast Fruit Souffle

Apple Breakfast Cake

Baked Grapefruit Crisp

Pumpkin Spice Muffins 

Kids (and adults!) also enjoy dipping apple slices in it – it kind of tastes like a caramel apple 🙂