An Adapted Healthier Chia Seed Florentines Recipe Inspired By Nutritionist Joy Skipper

Ahhh the humble Chia Seed. I cannot express my love for this powerhouse of a superfood enough and just adore its sheer versatility!!!  When the Naturya team kindly sent me a few pouches of their wonderful superfoods to try, I was also given a Chia Seed Florentine recipe to experiment with. This recipe was original created by Nutritionist Joy Skipper and have made a few adaptions to the original recipe in order to make it the ultimate guilt free, highly nutritious treat!

These little biscuits are extremely delicious and are surprisingly very simple to make (don’t make the picture fool you otherwise)!

What I LOVE about this recipe is that you can alter the ingredients to suit your taste, using different nuts or chopped dried fruit of your choice.

As I have made quite a few adaptions to the original recipe, I have also made reference to the recommended ingredients Joy Skipper used originally just in case you would like to experiment making the florentines her way.

How To Make My Healthier Guilt Free Version of Joy Skipper’s Chia Seed Florentines Ingredients 

25 g Lucy Bee Organic Coconut Oil (original recipe: unsalted butter)

75 g Total Sweet Xylitol or any other sugar alternative like coconut flour sugar  (original recipe: caster sugar)

10 g Doves Farm Organic White Spelt Flour (original recipe: plain flour)

65 g Veo Valley Half Fat Crème Fraiche (original recipe: double cream)

50 g Asda Flaked Almonds (I used Asda’s brand) 65 g Neal’s Yard Whole-foods Chopped Mixed Peel

25 g Naturya Cocoa Nibs

30 g Naturya Chia Seeds

150 g The Raw Choc Co Vanoffee Dark Chocolate (you can use any dark chocolate of your choice)

NOTE: This recipe is not gluten free, but can be made using gluten free plain flour.

Method

• Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F) Gas Mark 6.

• Place the coconut oil, your chosen sugar alternative and spelt flour in a pan and gently heat, stirring constantly, until the coconut oil has completely melted and everything is mixed together.

• Gradually add the crème fraiche, stirring continuously, until you have a smooth mixture.

• Stir in all the remaining ingredients except for the chocolate and remove from the heat.

• Leave to cool.

• Meanwhile, rub two baking sheets with coconut oil and dust with a little bit of spelt flour.

• Place heaped teaspoons of the mixture onto the baking sheets, leaving at least 2.5 cm space between them to allow for spreading!

• Bake for approx 12-15 minutes or until golden.

• Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the baking sheets for 2-3 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to completely cool down.

• Melt your choice of dark chocolate in a glass bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.

• Once the chocolate has melted to your desired consistency, place the Florentines, base up, on a wire rack and use a pastry brush to paint each one with melted chocolate.

• Allow to set before devouring with friends and loved ones 🙂

The above mixture will make approx 20 gorgeous and extremely more ish sweet treats (trust me when I say it will to resist going back into the Mason Jar for thirds and in my case a fourth haha)

Nutritional Breakdown

Using My Fitness Pal to calculate the nutritional breakdown per florentine (this was based on making 20 biscuits) the calorific breakdown are as follows:

Total Cals: 97

Protein: 7 g

Carbs: 10 g

Sugar: 3 g

Fat: 7 g

Now 97 calories per biscuit may seem alot but made with the adapted ingredients I chose to use has…

• Made this a highly nutritious biscuit rich in omega 3, 6 & 9, high in antioxidants and other micro-nutrients.

• Greatly limited the amount of refined sugar consumption by choosing a sugar alternative such as Xylitol.

• Greatly reduced the amount of saturated fat by using coconut oil rather than unsalted butter by opting for half fat crème fraiche as opposed to double whipped cream.

I hope after reading this you have been inspired to attempt to bake My Healthy, Highly Nutritious Version of Joy Skipper’s Chia Seed Florentines!

For mind blowing dark chocolate toppings, get creative and experiment with different Dark Chocolate Flavours using recommended healthy alternative and sugar free brands such as tried and tested:

• OmBar
• Conscious Chocolate and
• The Raw Chocolate Company (full review will soon be available to read)

I am torn between making this recipe again using either Green and Blacks Burnt Toffee Dark or Hazelnut and Currant for an extra crunch (decisions decisions).

Happy Baking All 🙂