Happy almost Thanksgiving!  I’ll be celebrating the holiday in earnest this week on the blog (minus drunk uncle Gary and the inevitable family drama) with delicious healthy recipes for your Thanksgiving dinner and beyond.

Now, onto the good stuff: the food.  These Salted Caramel Pecan Pie tarts are a riff on one of my favorite Thanksgiving desserts, Pecan Pie.  While the base of a pecan pie is actually quite healthy – the pecans – in traditional recipes, those innocuous nuts are doused in both cane sugar and corn syrup.  This version of healthy pecan pie uses a simple almond meal shortbread to create a buttery, grain free crust.  Atop that is the recipe’s secret, superstar ingredient: the caramel sauce.

The caramel sauce uses only dates, almond butter, vanilla and coconut oil to make something that tastes exactly like refined sugar laden caramel.  I love using my Vitamix to make this, as it creates a truly silky smooth result, but if you don’t have one, I recommend using a food processor: a normal blender won’t work nearly as well.

The trick is starting on the lowest possible setting, then letting it go around a bit, scraping down the sides if necessary, until it begins to become creamy.

Then you can turn up the speed for the final few seconds, resulting in an ooey-gooey, perfect healthy caramel.

A sprinkle of Maldon sea salt takes these truly over the edge: all of the flavors of the nutty, buttery base with the toasted pecans and the sweet, gooey caramel sauce are enhanced and highlighted by those crunchy little white nuggets on top.

Topped it with cream and voila: a Pecan Pie Tart that even guests who hate traditional healthy food won’t be able to get enough of.  I’m absolutely obsessed with these, and I’m sure you will be too.  They also come together surprisingly quickly, and there’s something so fun and cute about perfectly portioned tarts (I’ve always preferred them to pies myself).

Remember to stay tuned for the rest of the week for more awesome Thanksgiving recipes, and don’t forget to enter to win your own Vitamix (details are at the beginning of the post). Enjoy the healthy pecan pie goodness!

This post is brought to you by Vitamix, one of my beloved brand partners.  I only work with brands I truly love and adore; thank you so much for supporting the companies that make Sprouted Routes possible.  

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