Energy Bites
I haven’t been gardening as much since we moved to our new house. (Here is the post about that if you are interested in details about our move.) Partly because our yard is smaller, but mostly the drought last year really derailed our garden. But I do have a lot of freeze dried food in our basement. I think it’s a good idea to use it as much as I can. It won’t last forever. And even though I we haven’t restocked it as much this past year, we do have plans to plant more this year. In any case, I am always thinking about new ways incorporate the food storage that we have.
I am a firm believer in planting what you like to eat and in eating what you have spent the time to grow and store. In that pursuit I have been experimenting with a recipe for energy bites. Something that I could use freeze dried fruit in. Specifically the fruits my family doesn’t like plain. My kids love eating the freeze dried apples, strawberries, peaches and raspberries. So I wanted to find a use for my plums and apricots.
I made a few adjustments this time around and I think it really hit the mark, so I am going to share it. My kids love them! They took them in their lunch boxes and they asked for them as an after school snack. I feel great about them because there is no added sugar, except for the chocolate chips, which you could leave out or replace with dried fruit like raisins.
Really, I think most of the ingredients could be swapped with something similar, and some could be omitted altogether. So it is an incredibly versatile recipe. I have seen a lot of similar recipes that use dried plums or dates as the base, so if you don’t have freeze dried fruit you can probably use dried fruit. Though you might just want to find a recipe that is written that way. I understand if you do.
Energy Bites
Equipment
- blender or food processor
- bowl
- spoon or a sturdy spatula
Ingredients
- 1 cup Freeze Dried plums measure, then blend to powder
- 1 cup Freeze Dried apricots measure, then blend to powder
- 2 cups rolled oats measure, then blend to powder
- ¼ cup flax seed meal measure, then blend to powder
- ¼ cup shredded coconut measure, then blend to smaller pieces
- 1 cup peanut butter I used chunky, but smooth works as well
- 1 cup applesauce I used homemade, which has cinnamon but no added sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tbsp oil I used canola because I had it.
- 1 cup mini chocolate chips I didn't have mini ones so I blended the regular size, it didn't work extremely well but it did work
Instructions
- Blend dry ingredients separately in a blender and dump each into a large mixing bowl. Add peanut butter, applesauce, oil and vanilla into a smaller bowl and mix. Then add wet ingredients into the dry and add chocolate chips. Stir it until everything is evenly mixed. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Roll into small bite sized balls. Store in fridge or freezer.
So that’s it, not too complicated. And like I said, very flexible. The first few times I made them I didn’t blend the flax meal and it was fine, I just felt like it got stuck in my teeth a lot. So I decided to try blending it and I liked the results. I feel like the shredded coconut helped make them less sticky but I haven’t done full experimentation on that theory. This time around they were the perfect blend of wet and dry ingredients. I really like the peanuts from the chunky peanut butter because the bites are pretty soft and the nut chunks add a nice crunch, as do the chocolate chips.
I recommend storing these in the fridge because of the fruit. If you are going to take longer than a week or two to finish these off you may want to store some or all of them in the freezer. That is my plan, then I will just pack a few in my kids lunch box. By the time they are ready for lunch, they should be defrosted and ready to eat. We will see if I can manage to leave some for them. 😉
