Date Bark – the viral TikTok trend!

This rich and decadent date bark is made with four whole foods ingredients: dates, almonds, chocolate, and sea salt flakes. Slightly chewy and caramel-like, with melt-in-mouth chocolate and creamy almond butter, this didn’t last long in our house! It takes 10 minutes to make and is a delicious dessert or sweet snack. It’s one of those TikTok food trends that’s actually worth making!

As somebody who loves a good, sticky, sweet Medjool date, I knew I had to give this trend a go. I’d already tried Chocolate and Peanut Butter Stuffed Dates (aka Whole Foods Snickers) and loved them, but this one was even better.

It’s a bit less fiddly than stuffed dates as you just pour the chocolate over the top of your pressed dates rather than having to dip and coat whole dates. Another little bonus is that you can keep this in the freezer, and it won’t get super tough (unlike storing the stuffed dates in the freezer, which go pretty hard). While I haven’t done the math, I’m pretty sure this recipe has a higher chocolate-to-date ratio because of the larger surface area for the toppings, haha. I was thinking it could even be easy just to make a chocolate bark and sprinkle diced pieces of dates over the top, too, if you are more of a chocolate person than a date person.

One of the cool parts about this little recipe hack is that when you lift the date bark off the parchment paper, the underside of the dates pressed onto the sheet looks really cool! This would be a fun novelty treat to bring to a friend’s house for afternoon tea or dinner.

Ingredients

You only need 5 ingredients to make a date bark! Technically, 4, if you don’t include the optional sea salt. Quantities are listed in the recipe card at the bottom of this post, but here is a quick shopping list for your convenience:

• Medjool dates
•  Almond butter
•  Slivered almonds
•  Dark chocolate
•  Sea salt flakes

Variations and substitutions

• Nut butter – you can substitute almond butter for any nut butter you want. I’ve seen a lot of recipes calling for peanut butter, which would be delicious and more like a Snickers. I haven’t tried it myself, but pistachio butter could be delicious.
•  Nuts – you can substitute the slivered almonds for any other nuts you would like, like granulated peanuts.
•  Sea salt flakes as a topping are optional; I just personally LOVE a salty-sweet combination for dessert. I find it so addictive; it does something to the primal part of my brain, haha.
•  Other inclusions and toppings I think could be tasty but haven’t tried myself would be coconut flakes, dried cranberries, or freeze-dried raspberries. It could also look really pretty with some edible dried flower petals on top. If you try a variation, please report back in the comment section at the bottom of this post; I’d love to keep experimenting with this trend!
•  Dates – instead of dates, I’ve seen people on Instagram do something similar with sliced bananas. I haven’t tried it yet myself, but I’m keen to give it a go. Let me know if you try it!

Storage instructions

You have two options for storing the date bark:

1. Refrigerator – place in an airtight container. It will keep for up to 7 days.
2.  Freezer – Store it in an airtight container; it will keep for up to 2 months. Note that if eaten directly from the freezer, it will be quite chewy (some people don’t mind this), and the chocolate will break off/crumble as you eat it. To avoid this, leave it to thaw at room temperature for a few minutes before eating.

Watch me make the recipe.

More of a visual learner? Check out the video below for a quick guide on how to make a date bark.

I hope you’re as obsessed with the Date Bark food trend as I am now! Let me know what variations you tried in the comments below 🙂