Energy bites are a healthy homemade protein bar to add to your healthy quarantine snack recipes!

Ingredients:

12 fresh dates soft and sticky, pitted, if not soft soak in hot water 15min then drain,but this will decrease shelf life

1 cup nuts(almonds/pecans/or a blend such as 3/4cup almonds with 1/4cup cashews),

1/4cup almond butter or peanut butter,

1/4tsp vanilla extract,

1/4cup shredded coconut,

1 tsp cinnamon, or for chocolate version* cacao/cocoa powder to taste (approx 1-3.5tbsp) and if desired a tbsp of melted dairy free dark chocolate

1-2 tbsp maple syrup, optional, to taste/ more if adding cacao powder(or use a few more dates),

3tbsp coconut oil or mct oil,

2tbsp coconut manna (creamed coconut) or cocoa/cacao butter, melted,

pinch of sea salt

Blend the nuts in a food processor or blender designed for nuts ( i prefer a processor for this task) into a nut meal (crumb like). Add the other ingredients except nutbutter and pulse until smooth and homogenous, it will become a ball, break it up and pulse once more. place in mixing bowl and add the nutbutter. Divide into 12 pieces and form balls. Roll in shredded coconut, put in a brownie pan and cover and refigerate for at least 30-60min. If you leave them in the fridge overnight let them soften before taking a bite as nuts and manna get hard in the fridge.

they store at room temp or in fridge for about a week as long as no water was added (if used old dates soaked in hot water 15min and drained before blending, they will keep only a few days fridge or can be frozen and thawed

chocolate variation (variation of above date balls): omit cinnamon (or keep it!) and depending on how chocolatey you like them add 2-4tbsp cacao/cocoa powder and if you make them very chocolatey as cocao is bitter do taste test and add coconut sugar or more dates to taste(as cacao pdr is bitter, do it to taste depending on how dark or sweet you like your chocolate to be). You can also add in a tsp of melted cacao butter or a tbsp of strong coffee or coffee extract or a pinch of salt to reinforce the chocolate flavor.

*Note if your dates are not fresh and soft you will need to soak them 15m in hot water then drain and add a tiny splash of hot water or mylk as needed to blend, however of course adding moisture will decrease their shelf life, so its best to use fresh soft dates such as medjool dates(if so you will need slightly less as they are slightly bigger and sweeter than most dates)

Variations: play around with the ingredients to have different flavours for example use pecans instead of almonds, a combo of mostly almonds n some cashews, tahini instead of nutbutter along with almonds

for bars place in a paper lined brownie pan then once set in the fridge slice them

Also though date truffles are the tastiest energy balls can be made with all kinds of ingredients such as hemp seeds and goji berries/dried apricots/dried cherries etc.

Store extra dates in fridge or freezer if not using within a few weeks.

If you like this recipe and share it tag me on instagram @dairyfreeindulgencerecipes #dairyfreeindulgencerecipes (i know the name is long but dairyfreeindulgence was already taken on insta!) , I’d love to see your versions of my recipe 🙂