Breakfast Energy Balls

By : Melissa Baker

Recipe courtesy of www.KidsActivitiesBlog.com

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of almonds (we used slivered, but you can use any)
• 1/4 cup of cashew pieces
• 1/4 cup of dried fruit (we used dried cherries, but I bet any dried fruit would work)
• 1/4 cup of almond butter (+ 1 teaspoon of coconut oil – omit the coconut oil if you decide to substitute with peanut butter).
• 2 Tablespoons of Dark Chocolate pieces
• 1 cup of toasted granola

You can replace pretty much any of the ingredients – don’t like almonds?  Use walnuts… skip the chocolate and throw some toffee pieces in instead… or use coconut shavings in place of the cashews (yum!).

Directions:

Throw all the ingredients except for the almond butter and the granola into the food processor.  I chopped them pretty chunky.  The texture is fun.  But if you want these to stick together better consider chopping more finely.  The finer your nut meal the more dense (i.e. filling) your balls will be.

Once it’s chopped mix in the granola and the almond butter and coconut oil (or butter).  Make sure that everything is well coated, then put the bowl into the fridge for about 3 hours.  You want the nut meal to soak up some of the healthy fats from the almond butter.   It will help the balls stick together.

We used a 2 tablespoon scoop to portion control our breakfast balls. The recipe makes roughly a dozen balls – you might want to double it.  We usually make multiple versions.  Store the balls in an airtight container.   Grab 3-4 balls for a breakfast when you are running out the door.  They will last for awhile, but my guess is that your kids will eat them long before they go bad.