I love creating healthy and wholesome treats and because my most popular recipes on the blog are the sweet ones, I’ve got one more for you this week. At first I wasn’t sure whether to share these Chocolate Cauliflower Bars with you, because I think they might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re a health conscious foodie like me, you might want to give these a try.
The cauliflower makes these bars creamy and gives them mousse like texture and bonus they taste like chocolate. You can have these in the fridge and snack on them when you feel like a little something sweet.
I cooked the cauliflower first until soft, blended it until smooth and then added some ground walnuts, buckwheat flour, raw cacao and coconut sugar to make the bars. They are packed with cauliflower, but you can’t actually taste it.
I’ve decided to drizzle some melted dark chocolate over the top and sprinkle of raw cacao nibs to make them look a little more special, but you don’t have to. Alternatively you could stir some extra chocolate pieces into the mix before baking for even more chocolatey texture. Enjoy:)
Chocolate Cauliflower Bars (gluten-free & vegan)
Ingredients
- 400g cauliflower florets (2 cups when blended)
- 2tbsp coconut oil
- 100g ground walnuts (1 cup)
- 70g buckwheat flour (1/2 cup)
- 30g raw cacao powder (1/4 cup)
- 1tbsp ground flaxseed
- 50g coconut sugar (1/3 cup)
- 1tsp cinnamon
- pinch of sea salt
- Optional topping:
- 50g dark chocolate
- raw cacao nibs
Instructions
- Boil or steam cauliflower until soft, drain well and blend until smooth. Stir in the coconut oil and set aside.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan)
- Line 9"x 9" square baking dish with baking paper.
- In a large bowl whisk together ground walnuts, buckwheat flour, cacao powder, flaxseed, coconut sugar, cinnamon and sea salt.
- Add the dry ingredients to the cauliflower and stir until combined.
- Spoon the mixture into the baking dish and level the surface.
- Place into the oven and bake for about 30 minutes until it feels firm in the middle.
- Leave to cool down completely before cutting into 16 bars.
- Melt the dark chocolate in double boiler and drizzle over the bars. Sprinkle with few raw cacao nibs.
- Store in fridge in an airtight container.
- Enjoy!
I think I need to go stock up on some cauliflower ;) So good!
Thank you Rebecca! I feel like I’ve been eating way too much getting through all of these! I might have a cauliflower break now:)
I’m super impressed that these bars are made with cauliflower! Definitely something I would love to make :)
Thank you Bethany! Just trying to get more cruciferous veggies into my diet!
I love that these bars are full of cauliflower! I actually made some banana cauliflower muffins last week – it’s amazing how well cauliflower can be disguised in baked treats like these <3
Thank you Kyra! Yes, I’m quite impressed how well the cauliflower works. Looks like it could be easily replaced for banana in baked goods. Would love to try it in frosting next:)
Whoaaa, these are just amazing!! I can not believe you used cauliflower in these bars. That is just unbelievably creative! I need to try these!!
Thank you so much Erin! I’ve came across few recipes online using cauliflower in desserts, so I’m not the first one who tried it. It works really well and I’m definitely going to try it in cake mix next time.
These look mind-blowingly good, Hana! I love sneaking random veggies into baked treats but I hadn’t heard of using cauliflower until now! Gorgeous :)
Thank you Sasha! Cauliflower is definitely not what you would expect in a cake, but honestly it’s so disguised that you won’t even taste it:)
These look delicious and I would love to try them… And what a smart idea! I have a question though: Have you tried them with almonds instead of walnuts? And if so, did you get good results? My kid is not crazy about walnuts and, besides, her school only allows seeds but not nuts… These would make a lovely sweet snack to send with her if they were good with almonds.
Hi Maya, you could easily substitute the walnuts with almonds. I haven’t tried it myself, but I think it would be equally good as with walnuts. To make them completely nut free you could experiment with using sunflower seeds or possibly coconut flour in smaller quantity. Hope this helps. Thank you so much for visiting.
It was a very busy day in the office. I brought the brownie, I saw people munching here and there…and by the time I reached for a piece mid-afternoon….IT WAS GONE! It was a huge success! my changes were done due to ingredients shortage (half wallnuts, half hazelnuts; molasses instead of coconut sugar) and I’m certainly doing it again…! Thanks for sharing it :)
Thank you so much Marisa for this lovely comment! I’m so happy that you’ve enjoyed these! It was a bit of the same thing for me, I kept tasting and tasting, couldn’t decide whether I like them or not and kept eating more and more! x
Could you substitute buckwheat flour with coconut flour, and if so, how much to use? also, if you want to substitute the coconut sugar with an alternative sweetener like Splenda or Truvia, is coconut sugar equivalent to regular sugar in terms of the amount?
Hi Dana, I’m not sure about substituting with coconut flour, it’s so different it’ll change the recipe quite a bit. However you can always try and if so I would use 2tbsp or so. Coconut sugar is equivalent to the regular sugar in terms of the amount so you could substitute accordingly. I suggest that you experiment with the recipe, any recipe is open to changes and see how it turns out. Hope this helps.
Turned out amazing! Kids and adults loved them! Thank you!
Thank you so much Sarah for your lovely comment! I’m so happy that you all loved them!
Love your comment, you’re so welcome! x
I added some water, it was way too dry. … WHY ?
i was curious about the liquid missing in the recipe and when i mixed everything together ….. it was not working.
the batch is in the oven….. will see in 25 min :)
Hi Johanne, I find that the cauliflower with little bit of coconut oil is moist enough to bind everything together. Adding a little bit of water should be ok if the mixture was too dry. It could be that you’ve used less cauliflower or a bit more of the dry ingredients. Hope they work well.
Everything looks so yummy! Well done you :)
Will get start baking soon, especially since I got plenty of coconut flour to use.
Thank you so much Nat! Thank you for stopping by and I hope you’ll enjoy some of the recipes:) x
Hi Hana,
I just tried these after ogling at the recipe and pictures for a good few days.
I used raw sugar, flaxseed meal and almond flour instead of the prescribed ingredients, as that’s what I had on hand. Also, I used cocoa powder, and a wee bit of baking powder. The mixture was a bit dry so I added maybe a tbsp more of coconut oil, and voila! I ended up baking myself chocolate-cauliflower brownies !!
I could taste a bit of cauliflower though, so maybe I need more sugar/ cocoa for the next round :))
Really nice. Will make them again as soon as I get more cauliflower :))
Yay, I’m so happy you’ve enjoyed these! I think the recipe is quite open to experimentation and creating your own version that you like the best :) Thank you so much for coming back and leaving a comment. x
Holy crap! This combiation of ingridients sounds quite strange and that’s why I’ve saved it on my “to do” list! Thanks for sharing <3 Best regards from Poland!
You’re so welcome Klaudia! Hope you like the bars :) Regards from London!
Can I use oat flour instead of walnut? I don’t really eat nuts and seeds eaither. Thank you.
Maple
Hi Maple, yes, you can, I’ve used the walnuts mainly to bring more flavour and texture to the recipe, but I’m sure oat flour will work well too.
Hi Hana, my husband is diabetic and we were wondering how many carbs are in these delicious little treats.
(:
Hi Taylor, they have 9.7g carbs per bar, that’s without the chocolate drizzle on top.
How many calories do they have?
Hi Maria, I’m sorry I don’t count the calories in my recipes.
Hi there! I just stumbled across your blog and am looking forward to trying some of your recipes. I cannot have any grains, however, and was wondering if I could substitute tapioca/cassava flour in place of the buckwheat? Thanks so much!
Hi Julia, in this recipe cassava flour should be fine. It really depends on the recipe, my sponge cakes do have a mix of gluten-free flours which might be tricky to substitute just with cassava flour but I have some with chestnut flour which are grain-free. But I do have quite a few grain-free recipes on the blog too.
What a lovely idea!
Yes, some veggies are great in sweet bakes. Try parsnip – it’s lovely and sweet. I bet you could come up with a wonderful parsnip cake (if you haven’t already), And with Xmas coming it’s seasonal too.
Helen x