Healthy treats can require lots of special and high-powered equipment to break down the whole food ingredients. Here I took a shortcut and chose only ingredients that would blend well- soft dates, ground nuts, nut butter, powdered cacao and vanilla extract. As long as the dates are fairly fresh they can be chopped up with a knife then the whole mixture can be mixed by hand, by massaging everything until it becomes a cohesive batter. Dates provide fast, easy energy along with fiber and several other vitamins and minerals. The nuts offer some healthy fats and the cacao also offers a big energy hit, many antioxidants and minerals. The cacao does contain caffeine so if you have any sensitivities to it, it is best to keep the servings very small. Since these provide lots of energy in a small, portable and easy to digest package they are one of my favorite treats to bring on long, gruelling hikes or bike rides, I find that about one every 45 minutes is enough to keep me going strong. Any nut or seed flour and butter can be used but I like to have hazelnuts somewhere in there because with the chocolate flavor from the cacao they end up tasting like nutella.
- 1 cup fresh dates, pits removed and finely chopped (around 9-10 large medjool dates)
- ¾ cup hazelnut flour
- ¼ cup almond butter
- ¼ cup raw cacao
- Optional: ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Mash all the ingredients together with your hands or in a food processor or high-powered blender until fully blended. Roll around 1 tablespoon of the mixture into a ball and repeat for each truffle.
