I’ve been making date balls for years now. They are a go to snack the whole family loves and no sugar added! Not to mention, they are easy to create and a great little boost of energy mid-day.
With NaNoWriMo almost over, I thought I’d share this recipe as a little energy boost to get you through the home stretch of your novel. If you’re not participating in NaNoWriMo, then this recipe is also great to get you through the afternoon slump of your workday, or it’s just delicious to eat any time.
Chocolate Date Balls
First gather up your ingredients. You’ll need a cup and a half of pitted dates, three quarters cup almonds, three tablespoons of cocoa powder, three teaspoons of vanilla, and a quarter teaspoon of salt. I like to keep an eighth cup to a quarter cup of water on hand in case the mix needs a little boost.
This is the only recipe I’ll use dates in. Just looking at them, I can’t even bring myself to eat them whole like this even though I know they are delicious! It’s that whole mind over matter thing and for some reason my mind gives dates a big ol’ nope. It’s a good thing it’s okay with them processed into date balls. I don’t know what I’d do without them!
First add all of the ingredients to a food processor, using only an eighth cup of water to start out with. I usually start with some short burst pulses to get the bigger pieces broken down some, then I’ll do some longer blasts of the processor to really get it combined. Check the mixture throughout the processing to see how sticky it is. You’ll want it chopped up fine and it should be a sticky mix. It took me a few minutes of processing to get the consistency I was looking for.
Once you have a good mix, wet your hands and start rolling the mix into balls, whatever size you want, but I think about a half inch or so balls are just about perfect. You can do bigger if you want, but you’ll get less per batch.
On that note, if you want to make more than one batch of these, do them individually. Don’t double or triple the batch because the food processor probably won’t be able to handle that many ingredients.
Finally, if you’d like to add a little pizzazz to your date balls, roll them in some candy sprinkles or coating of your choosing. I used some milk chocolate sprinkles I’ve had around here, but I’ve also seen people roll them in those little multi colored candy sprinkles, shredded coconut, sesame seeds, crushed nuts, cocoa powder, powdered sugar and more.
I once tried using melted chocolate, but it took away from the date balls, so I suggest, just playing around with different toppings to see which one works best for you. In my opinion, less is more. Even my kids prefered the date balls with no sprinkles. Yeah, I know…crazy kids! I kinda liked them with the extra chocolate sprinkles, but not too many.
What is your favorite snack to enjoy when you need a little bit of an energy boost? Share your favorites in the comments below.
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