These sweets need no presentation! But if you have never heard about them, know that in Moldova these are the most sold sweets, and well known in Romania too. I already made different versions of them but now I want to show this recipe which is even closer to the original one and still is healthy as it has no sugar or other strange ingredients. Made mainly of dried plums and cacao nibs, and optionally you can add some vanilla powder. I also cover them in dark chocolate (made home out of cacao massa and coconut butter, so no sugar involved here again, but you can use your healthy version of dark chocolate too).

To make 45-50 bonbons :

180gr cacao nibs

450 gr plums, without pit

3-4 TbSp almond butter (or another butter like cashews)

Start by blending the cacao nibs to get a powder. I hope that you got a powerful blender (Vitamix) to have it quickly done. You would better split the quantity into 3 smaller ones so that it gets smoothly blended. Pour it into a bowl.

Taking out the pit of the plums can also be a hard work, in case they are too dry. In this case, soak the plums in water for 1-2h so that this can be easily done. Once the plums pitted, add a part of them to the 1/3 of the blended cacao nibs and blend it further. The blender and the nature of the plums will decide how smooth it will go. In case this is not working to blend your plums, cut them in small pieces. What I do: i first do it with the blender and then, the bigger parts which weren’t cut small, I cut them myself. I know this blending is not the most easiest job to do so in this case just cut the plums in small parts. But if you got a good blender, let the blender do this work: the idea is to get the plums cut in small pieces and not to get a paste (or this paste shouldn’t represent 100% of the plums as we want to taste the bites of plums when eating these bonbons). Once you finish with the plums, add them to the bowl with the cacao nibs. Pour into it the almond/cashews butter (its purpose here is to help to blend everything together). Mix everything with your hands. Try it. In case the plums you are using aren’t very sweet (somethimes they can be even sour), add 1-2 TbSp of your favorite syrup/honey. In case you have difficulties with blending everything together with your hands, add 2-3 TbSp of water/coconut milk. The texture should hold together.

Now start forming the desired shapes. I love the square form of the original bombons so we always make them like this. Once done ith the shaping, you can either put them in the freezer (so that you can later cover them in dark chocolate ) or enjoy them like this. Both versions are nice, but the covered in chocolate ones are my favorite ones especially when I want to offer them. In case you make them, please let me know how you liked them.