Energy Truffles

Lucky me, while perusing facebook I ran across a creative friend's post explaining how to make a quick, high-protein (yet sweet) snack that she made to help her daughter sustain energy through a two-hour gymnastics class.

This caught my eye, because I had been searching for new foods/recipes for high-energy activities. I tried this recipe — verdict is "yummy" and "simple." I've made them three times already.

My son will rarely eat nuts (other than pistachios) so this is a great way to occasionally include other healthy nuts in his diet, and the Nutella made it easy to encourage him to try them. The nuts and oats (protein, fat and fiber) mixed with a little quick energy (sugar/carbs) seem to do the trick!

Instructions (from Kristin Nelson-Patel):

• Grind a handful of mixed raw nuts in a coffee grinder, mix with about 1Tbs Nutella in a small bowl. The Nutella will just soak the near-pasty nuts right up but you start to get a sticky dough.
• Now, grind a handful of rolled oats (we use Trader Joes certified G...F rolled oats) to a powder.
• Start just kneading the oat powder into the dough until it's still soft but doesn't stick to your hands.
• Now roll that into little balls, toss each ball in the oat flour to coat and roll again until the surface oat powder is mostly absorbed but keeping the surface drier than it otherwise would have been.
• Voila. You now have several Nutella energy truffles. 

Action Item: Make these truffles. You'll feel like a chef! At least I did. And realizing that I can use my coffee grinder to grind nuts is a beautiful thing. (I can't believe I had never thought of that either!)

For Further Reading: Nuts to Increase Energy. For those thinking of the environment, you may be happy to know that Nutella's parent company has a palm oil charter and will achieve 100% traceable segregated, RSPO-certified palm by the end of 2014.