Pitted Dates = A near death experience for my food processor!

[froggythefrog]

This is my food processor: Shop KitchenAid KFP715 Food Processor, 7-Cup at CHEFS.

It's actually not a bad little guy and has even created some nice nut pastes bordering on being nutbutters for me. In some ways, this guy is probably the best ~$80 I ever spent.
Well, tonight, I looked in the cupboard and noticed a bag of dates I had bought many moons ago. I really wasn't even sure what my cabinet looked like without this bag of dates in it, so it was definitely time to use them. I had not eaten the dates because they were black dates and I did not like the texture of their skin nearly as much as medjool dates. So I decided to make a date confection out of them and proceeded to pit them and put them in the food processor.
Let's just say that the food processor was on, but the blade was moving maybe once every 20 seconds... I was having visions of sparks, smoke, and burnt smell in the near future, so I shut it off, conglomerated all the dates into a nice ball and chopped the ball into slices with a knife, and reconglomerated the ball and cut it until I was satisfied with the texture of the dates.
I swear I've done dates in the food processor with other items (such as nuts) before and the food processor did fine. So, is it time to get a better food processor if I am going to chop dates, or should I stick to chopping large quantities of dates by hand?

 

[Andy M.]

You might get better results if you process the dates with something else. Process nuts, for example, the drop the dates into the processor while it's running.

 

[bethzaring]

the only thing I use my FP to chop dates for is an energy type bar, and I sprinkle some flour/oat mixture over the dates so the dates don't stick together so much...works okay, takes time to chop them up..

 

[froggythefrog]

Andy: Thanks! I am sure this is why it had worked before. Now I want to go buy another bag of dates just to experiment and see if adding the shredded coconut I used later on would have done the trick.

bethzaring: I like this idea, and I have plenty of rolled oats. If I had quartered the dates and used a few of those, I am sure my food processor would have had enough of a head start to get the job done.

 

[nikki]

I've always found that if you're processing/blending the dates with a liquid, water or almond milk, (just a little bit!) you'll have more luck with it... But alone, with my own experiences, it hasn't worked too well at all. Though, I've been using a blender to do most of this stuff as I don't have a food processor..
As bethzaring says, using them with oats even works too, and add a little shredded coconut and some almond slices/slivers, cinnamon, and you're good to go!
Great, now I'm hungry...