Just three ingredients are needed in this easy candy recipe that is full of vitamins, minerals, fibre and protein. The pumpkin seeds are sprouted meaning the nutrients are better absorbed by the body.

Pumpkin seeds  are high in iron, zinc, magnesium and protein. They have a strong earthy taste that I don’t find palatable on their own but they do work really well in this candy with sweet dates and bitter dark chocolate.

This healthy candy recipe is suitable for vegan (when using dairy-free chocolate), plant-based, paleo, nut-free, grain-free, oil-free, gluten-free and general healthy diets. You can make raw by using a raw chocolate or making your own, more info later.

3 Ingredient Pumpkin Seed Chocolate Candy Video

Play on YouTube or View FAST video or View No Music Video

This candy would look great with a bit of wheatgrass or barley grass powder added to the pumpkin date mixture. You wouldn’t be able to taste it but would help give a bright vibrant green colour and add even more nutrition.

I did want to add some when making this but decided to keep it as a simple three-ingredient recipe to make it accessible to everyone and not include any obscure ingredients.

Pumpkin seeds taste like they have a lot of good stuff in but I’m the first to admit I don’t like their flavour just on their own. In this pumpkin seed candy recipe you don’t notice the usual strong earthy taste that pumpkin seeds often have.

You can make this with a raw chocolate topping if you prefer just using a mixture of 1/3 cacao with 1/3 sweetener such as maple syrup and 1/3 fat such as cacao butter or coconut oil. This would make the candy totally raw.

In this healthy candy recipe the pumpkin seeds are soaked in order to activate them and easier to digest. This means that your body can absorb more of the vitamins and minerals.

When I first started this recipe I was going to make raw pumpkin seed millionaires shortbread. However as I wanted to use sprouted seeds and make it oil free it was difficult to make something that cut cleanly into squares.

I made several other healthy candy versions that are also nut free and gluten-free and although they tasted great they look like a right mess by the time I’ve chopped them up (photo of this around the 5-minute mark in the video).

By turning this candy upside down you cut the soft layer first before getting hard chocolate. Although sometimes the chocolate does crack at retains it’s shape. If you tried cutting it the other way around the pumpkin mixture would splurge out in a mess.

I’m using an 84% cacao very dark chocolate for this pumpkin candy. This does have some sugar added but only a small amount and it’s quite bitter on its own but with the intense sweetness of the dates, it satisfies a sweet tooth. As mentioned above you can make your own raw chocolate instead or use any other chocolate bar that you like.

You can use any dried fruit you like in place of the dates. Sultanas also work very well but as many people haven’t been keen on them in previous recipes I’ve reverted back to good old dates for this. I just use standard pure pitted dates for this, try to use reasonably soft ones without any added sugar or preservatives but it doesn’t have to be the very expensive medjool.

I couldn’t decide with this recipe if I wanted to decorate the candy the pumpkin seeds. In the end I left naked to emphasise how simple this recipe is and also to not make it obvious that it contains pumpkin seeds as some people, myself included, really don’t like the taste of pumpkin seeds on their own.

A quick 15-minute soak in warm water is sufficient for these but ideally, you’d want to leave for at least an hour or overnight. A pinch of salt in water helps the activation sprouting process.

Pumpkin seeds are one of the healthiest foods to choose as long as they’re raw and not toasted. Heating these seeds destroys much of the nutrition.

One ounce / 28 grams contains about 1/3 of an adults RDA for phosphorus, manganese, magnesium and 1/5 RDA of iron, zinc and copper. Pumpkin seeds are also high in antioxidants and these help to protect cells and reduce inflammation.