A single-serve bar from treatfuls, the Berlin-based organic snack brand founded in 2021 by Magdalena and Tugce. The idea behind the whole range is simple: build a chocolate-style bar out of dates and nuts instead of sugar and milk, and see how close you can get to the real thing. This one goes after brownie — a dense, fudgy date-and-cocoa centre wrapped in a dark cocoa-butter coating.
What is actually inside. The body of the bar is date paste. Dates are pressed into a soft, sticky mass that behaves in the mouth much like a fudgy brownie crumb, and they bring their own sweetness, so no sugar, syrup or sweetener needs to be added on top. Cocoa gives the brownie character; nuts and a little sea salt keep it from tasting flat. The coating is dark chocolate made on cocoa butter and cocoa mass, with no dairy anywhere in the bar.
A word about “no added sugar”. It is true and it matters — but it does not mean the bar is low in sugar. Dates are roughly two-thirds sugar by weight, and a date-based bar carries that with it. What you gain is fibre, potassium and a whole-fruit matrix rather than refined sucrose; what you do not gain is a free pass. Treat it as a proper sweet treat with better ingredients, not as diet food.
When to eat it. Mid-afternoon, when the alternative is a vending machine. In a rucksack on a walk along the Foz seafront. After training, when you want something sweet that also contains actual food. Alongside an espresso, where the cocoa and the bitterness meet nicely.
Keep it cool. Cocoa butter softens at around 30 °C and melts below body temperature, which is exactly why chocolate feels the way it does — and exactly why a bar left on a car dashboard in a Porto July comes back as a sad puddle. Store it somewhere cool and dry. If it does soften, the fridge will set it again; the surface may go pale (that is fat bloom, harmless) but the flavour is unaffected.
Contains nuts. Vegan, organic, no palm oil, no soy, no lactose. Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.