Recipe for homemade date sugar, a traditional sweetener made from dried dates that is loaded with minerals, B vitamins, and antioxidants. It even rivals honey in anti-bacterial properties.
Whole, granulated date sugar or syrup is one of the very few allowed sweeteners on autoimmune healing diets like SCD or GAPS.
The reason is because date sugar is 100% fruit. This means that it is easily digested containing only monosaccharides like raw honey. Other popular sweeteners (including maple syrup and coconut sugar) contain disaccharides. These double sugars can serve as food to strengthen and further entrench gut pathogens in an unbalanced gut.
Besides ease of digestion, dates also measure extremely high in minerals. Ounce for ounce, dates are higher in potassium than bananas!
Date sugar is also the king of antioxidant sweeteners. Only molasses ranks higher. However, date sugar is still the better choice. This is because molasses is highly processed, consisting of the stripped away minerals from cane sugar. (1)
Despite its nutrient density and easily digested form, most people have never tried date sugar or syrup. This is because, in some areas, it can be quite expensive or not available at all!
Fortunately, granulated date sugar is quite easy to make yourself. The trick is to only ever use Deglet Noor dates. Other types like Medjool are too moist and will not granulate properly. They will also likely gum up your food processor.
As more people are realizing that a balanced gut environment is crucial to strong immunity and good health overall, the ease of making date sugar at home will likely become a more common practice.
If you wish to buy date sugar or syrup rather than make it, I recommend and use this brand.
Homemade Date Sugar Recipe
Recipe for homemade date sugar, a traditional sweetener made from dried dates that is loaded with minerals, B vitamins, and antioxidants. It even rivals honey in anti-bacterial properties.
Ingredients
- 1 - 1.5 cups dried Deglet Noor dates preferably organic
Instructions
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Slice each date in half and remove the pit.
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Place the pitted dates in a food processor or similar machine.
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Pulse until thoroughly ground up. You now have your own organic, homemade date sugar.
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Store in a sealed container in a cool, dark place so that the date sugar doesn’t reabsorb moisture or degrade in quality.
Recipe Notes
Note that granulated date sugar does not dissolve particularly well. Hence, if you need to use it in recipes that require the sweetener to dissolve thoroughly, use date syrup instead.
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