No-Bake Energy Bites a.k.a. Protein Poppers

Ingredients:

• 1 cup dry oatmeal (the picture is deceiving, but I used rolled oats)
• 1/3 cup coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup nut butter (I used 1/4 cup almond and 1/4 cup peanut butter)
• 1/2 cup ground flax seed
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional, but I didn’t use them this time around)
• 1/3 1/4 cup raw honey (I found 1/3 to be too sweet for my taste)
• 1 tsp vanilla (I was out, so I omitted this)

Directions:

1.   Mix together all the ingredients. It takes a little time and some elbow grease, but you want to make sure everything is mixed together really well. This helps with forming the balls later.

2.   Chill the mixture in the fridge for at least an hour. I’ve found that the longer you chill it, the better the balls bind together.

3.   Roll, roll, roll the mixture into balls about 1-inch in diameter and enjoy!

 Find the original recipe here

In total this recipe has roughly 1661 calories.

Divided by 20 balls that comes to about 83 calories each. 

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I’ve made this recipe several times and omitted coconut and vanilla the first few times because I was out. The most recent time, I had coconut but not chocolate chips. As you can see in the first photo, I got out some dark chocolate. I was going to melt it and dip the balls in, but I ended up eating them before I had a chance.

This recipe makes between 20 and 30 balls, depending on how big you roll them. You can modify this recipe to your liking, but I don’t recommend messing with the honey and nut butter quantities. Those are important in binding everything together.

Substitutions:

Dry ingredients:

• White chocolate or butterscotch chips
• Dried cranberries, raisins, or chopped apricots
• Chopped almonds, pecans, or walnuts
• Sunflower seeds or pine nuts

Wet ingredients:

• Agave nectar for honey
• Sunflower seed or soy nut butter for peanut butter

*Update 8/29/12* Someone has told me that sunflower butter works well, but the mixture ends up a little gooey, so they added extra oats to make them stick together better. Also, I refrigerate them because I like them chilly, but as far as I know, they don’t have to be refrigerated, although they’d probably last a few weeks longer if they were.

Next time, I hope I can resist eating these long enough to try the chocolate-dipped version.