Diet: Dairy Free, Gluten Free, Paleo, Pescatarian, Soy Free, Vegan, Vegetarian
Total Time: 25 minutes

Description

These energy balls offer sweet, chocolatey deliciousness that will not only satisfy your sweet tooth, they will also help with sustaining your energy throughout the day.

Snacks are meant for keeping the body satiated until the next meal. When you eat snacks that are laden with refined sugars and lacking in protein or fat, you are setting yourself up for a blood sugar disaster. You’re blood sugar can spike and you may end up crashing with less energy than you had before you ate your snack. When your blood sugar spikes up and down too frequently, it will cause you to overeat while under-nourishing the body in the process.

This is why smart snacking is so important to avoid consuming empty calories and having blood sugar imbalance.

These energy balls contain coconut (full of fibre and fat), chia seeds (rich in fat and protein) and ground almonds (rich in fat and plant protein) which all help to slow the release of sugars from the medjool dates into the bloodstream. Fibre, fat and protein all help to steady our blood sugar levels as a result and avoid those sugar spikes that we all dread!

Tip: try preparing a batch of these on a Sunday night before the week ahead. Making smart nutrition choices for your busy work week is so important for a productive and healthy life!

Ingredients

• 12 medjool dates, pitted
• 1 cup ground almonds or almond flour
• 1/2 cup dessicated coconut, plus 1/4 cup extra for rolling
• 1/3 cup coconut oil
• 1/3 cup cacao powder
• 1.5 tbsp chia seeds

Method

1. Place all ingredients (except the 1/4 cup of extra desiccated coconut for rolling) into a food processor and blitz until the mixture starts to come together.
2. Transfer into a medium-sized bowl and stand for 20 minutes so that the chia seeds can soften up.
3. Take a tablespoon of the mixture and roll into a ball. Repeat until you have used the entire mixture to form lots of little date balls.
4. Place the leftover desiccated coconut into a shallow dish. Dip and roll each of the balls in the coconut to coat.
5. Now they are ready to eat! You can store these in the fridge or in a container on the side, the choice is yours!