Chocolate Truffle Nutty Protein Balls Recipe
These chocolate balls are great for anyone, who doesn’t have a nut allergy, as they are vegan and gluten free with no added sugars. There’s no baking required and they don’t contain sugar, flour, eggs or butter. In fact, they require only a handful of ingredients (six of you coat with coconut), these are: dates, cashew nuts, sunflower seeds, cocoa powder and vanilla extract. Oh and a blender too!
Living in Strathbungo Village gives me easy access to a plethora of Asian grocery shops, in the neighbouring, multi cultural, villages of Pollokshields and Govanhill. The range and variety of, low cost, colourful spices is extremely impressive, so too that of dates. Shops have them from a range of Eastern Countries and I can chose the ones appropriate for my recipe. For this particular recipe, I required 14 soft dates but I got a whole lot more than that, for only £1:99. I’m not sure what cost, or price, you will have in your local supermarket, or green grocers, but suitable dates shouldn’t be too difficult to source. Although mine still had the stones in them, it’s not difficult to remove them when chopping the dates. Although you may prefer to use pitted ones.
The quantities in this recipe, yielded a baker’s dozen of chocolate balls but you could make a couple more, by making your balls just a little smaller.
Ingredients:
- 14 whole dates
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 32 grams of unsweetened cocoa powder
- 70 grams of sunflower seeds
- 60 grams of cashew nuts
- for coating: cocoa powder and desiccated coconut
Directions:
Chop and, if necessary, pit your dates. Add them to your blender with two teaspoons of vanilla extract, add the cocoa powder, the sunflower seeds and lastly the cashew nuts.
Blend the ingredients for a minute or so and then stop and scrape down the sides of the blender. Repeat this and don’t worry when the mixture appears to be too dry. Keep scraping and blending and the oil from the seeds and nuts will moisten the mixture.
Once the ingredients are fully mixed, use a wooden spoon to scoop out the mixture (about one tablespoon each scoop) and, using clean hands, roll into a smooth ball and then place on a clean, dry, plate. Continue scooping and rolling until all the mixture is used up.
Sprinkle cocoa powder onto a plate and desiccated coconut on to another. Roll half the moist balls on one plate and the other half on the other. Ensuring that the balls are fully covered with the coating.
Show patience now and place the Chocolate Truffle Nutty Protein Balls in a refrigerator for some four hours before tasting. To gain maximum benefit from the energy and protein enjoy these before or after your workout, preferably with friends. There’s no need to eat them all at once, although you might be tempted with them being so scrumptious, but they will last for a week, if stored in the fridge.
Based on a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction
Poetry n Fitba' Gang the Gither 