Baking with Erin and Rory

Almond Butter Balls

Erin was only vaguely interested in this project but she did watch a lot from the sidelines. She also taste-tested.

I needed to make a healthy, gluten-free, low sugar snack to take to her school today. And I love Power Balls or Energy Balls or Peanut Butter balls or whatever you want to call them myself so I wanted to do some sort of variation on that, thinking Erin would enjoy the rolling part.

After perusing a number of recipes, I came up with this, using almond butter since one child in the class also avoids peanuts:

Almond Butter Balls

Makes roughly 30-40 balls, depending on how small you roll them:

• 1/2 cup granola (we used Enjoy Very Berry gluten-free granola)
• 3 T brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1 1/2 cups almond butter
• finely shredded coconut for rolling

1. Stir together the first four ingredients.
2. Begin adding almond butter, working it in slowly to get a smooth consistency.
3. Let sit in fridge for a few hours or overnight.
4. Shape into small balls and roll in coconut.

While a little mushy (I'm trying to think of what to do to firm them up - peanut butter in place of the almond butter would probably take care of it), these are delicious! I tried a very small one, but I could have eaten about a dozen. Wow.

Plated and ready to go to Erin's school:

Up close:

Yummy! I love a healthy vegan snack like nobody's business.

And if you're feeling indulgent, these could also be made with chocolate chips.

Non-baking project

Now that the holidays are behind us, I've embarked on a diet/cleanse for a few weeks so I've had to put my baking on hold. I have some great plans to pick it up again once that's behind me (and will very likely be working on some healthy baking treats with Erin even as we continue our way through VCTOTW).

In the meantime, Erin and I are planning a garden and will be working on that very soon. Stay tuned here for details. This seemed as good a place as any to document our break-from-baking project. Let's see if later in the spring/summer we can actually work some home-grown items into our baking adventures!

We're planning a square foot garden. I'm not exactly sure what we'll plant yet, I'm sure the Natural Gardener will advise. So, stay tuned!

Here are the girls at our visit to TNG last Saturday.

We're planning to go again this Saturday, though I hope it's not too cold!