Healthy No Bake Breakfast Bites

After days of prepping and cooking for Thanksgiving and a few more hours of preparing extra healthy lunches for the week, what's the first thing I wanted to do when it was time to relax on Sunday night? Get involved in another recipe of course! These no-bake breakfast bites were on the top of my list. (http://fooddoodles.com/2011/06/28/one-bowl-all-natural-no-bake-energy-bites/ picture from this website)

I used the following ingredients: 1/2c peanut butter, 1/3c honey, 3/4c unsweetened shredded coconut, 1/4c ground flax, 1/4c chia seeds, 1/4c raisins, 1c uncooked oatmeal, 4tbsp hemp protein powder, pinch salt, 1tsp vanilla extract.

Typically I would steer clear of a recipe that calls for 1/2 cup nut butter and 1/3 cup honey because I hate to use so much of those precious ingredients all at once, but I caved in and went for it anyway. After all, if i'm ever going to get to work on time, I need to figure out a quick-grab breakfast option that's not full of processed junk, sugar, and empty calories.

This recipe was incredibly easy to put together - in a bowl mix the wet ingredients, add in the dry ingredients, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. The hard part was turning the bowl of ingredients into neat tightly packed balls. This took me quite a while.

The other bummer was, the recipe, as written on the above website, does not have all that much protein, so I added 4 tbsp of hemp protein powder. Thankfully, the powder did not overpower the other yummy flavors, in fact, I could not even taste it (and when you can taste the hemp powder, it ususally tastes pretty bad).

I laboriously formed 21 balls (mine shown on red). The recipe was supposed to yield 24, but my sizes got a little irregular. Because the plan is to eat these on the way to work, I had to dust them with something dry so that I wouldn't ruin my clothes or steering wheel with oily fingers. I chose to grind some almonds in my Blendtec blender (the wonder machine), and give the balls a roll in that. Then I packed single servings (see nutrition information below) in wax paper bags, sealed the whole stash in a big ziploc bag, and put it in the freezer.

This morning I grabbed a small bag on my way out the door. I'd say it was out of the freezer about 10 minutes before I started eating it and it was delicious. I actually ended up eating only one instead of both. Maybe I will have the second for an after-lunch dessert.

NUTRITION INFORMATION  Serving Size: One Breakfast Bite
Calories: 104.2, Total Fat: 6.2g, Saturated: 2.1g, Polyunsaturated: 1.3g, Monounsaturated: 1.7g, Trans Fat: 0, Cholesterol: 0, Sodium: 2.1mg, Potassium 48.1mg, Total Carbs: 10.5g, Dietary Fiber: 2.5g, Sugars: 6.2g, Protein: 3.1g, Vitamin A: 0%, Vitamin C: .4%, Calcium 2.1%, Iron: 4.6%.