Description
Healthy low-fat and date-free chocolate bliss balls that make a great plant-based energy boosting sweet treat for work or kids’ lunch boxes.
Ingredients
- 2 cans (480g, 17oz) unsalted cooked black beans
- 60g (2.1oz) rolled oats
- 1/4 tsp. Himalayan salt
- 3 tbsps. mesquite flour
- 3 tbsps. cacao powder
- 7 tbsps. coconut flour
- 4 tbsps. (60g, 2.1oz) unsweetened applesauce
- 4 tbsps. date sugar (for Plantricious version) or other sweetener (see notes)
- 2 tbsps. (30g, 1.06oz) additive-free nut butter
Instructions
- Start by rinsing and draining canned black beans.
- Next, add all the bliss balls’ ingredients into food processor and process until you have a homogeneous and sticky dough. Don’t bother to process into a really smooth dough. Instead, leave some texture to the bliss balls. Depending on the moistness of you beans and potency of your food processor, it might be easier to process the beans, oats, salt, applesauce, and nut butter first. Then, transfer the batter into a bowl and mix in the rest of the ingredients either using a spatula or by hand.
- Now, scoop out about 40-45g (1.4-1.6oz) of batter and form a bliss ball between your palms. The dough is supposed to be quite soft as it will thicken in the fridge. You will get 16-17 bite-sized balls, depending on how much batter you’ve tasted along the way. Gently place the balls into a bigger container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. They will be extra good and buttery on the next day!
Notes
I wouldn’t recommend substituting black beans. However, red kidney beans would be the closest. Definitely don’t use chickpeas in this recipe as those tend to be much drier and you’d therefore need to adjust the quantities of other ingredients.
My bliss balls are not overly sweet. So, should you be more of a sweet tooth, feel free to add more sweetener. You can also use low-glycemic sweeteners such as erythritol and xylitol.
Carob powder can be used instead of mesquite flour.
You may use either cacao powder or cocoa powder. The first being raw and the latter heat-treated powder.
Make sure you indeed have coconut flour and not ground coconut, and definitely not desiccated coconut. Coconut flour has most of the fats removed and hence contains about 12 grams of fat per 100 grams of flour.
You’re welcome to use store-bought applesauce, but make sure it comes without any additives. Alternatively, prepare homemade applesauce.
Storage: when the bliss balls have firmed up, cover the container with lid and keep in the fridge for up to 4 days. For longer keeping, store the balls in the freezer.
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Method: Food processor
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/16 of the recipe
- Calories: 99.8 kcal
- Sodium: 42.6mg
- Fat: 2.1g
- Saturated Fat: 0.75g
- Carbohydrates: 11.5g
- Fiber: 5.1g
- Protein: 4.5g
