Mint Energy Balls: Cause It’s Not Christmas Without Balls

In the spirit of stepping away for a hot minute to enjoy every moment of the holidays with my parents, I’ve got a super simple fun post today!

It’s strange to realize that in so many years of blogging, I’m usually running my Holiday Bootie Buster program right now which always had over 200 participants and thus kept me jumping no matter what holiday it was!

This year I took some of my own advice and decided to say “no” to things that just weren’t having a big enough impact for the effort and so I miss all my Bootie Busters sharing their updates with me, but my body is feeling far less stressed.

My good friend Laura hosted a cookie swap again this year and far be it from me to not sample everything I could get my hands on. But I also tried to make something to cater to the gluten free and dairy free among us!If you have no idea what I”m talking about a cookie swap is as easy as it sounds! Everyone brings 3 dozen homemade (preferably) cookies and then gets to go home with a box of other cookies!

David was thrilled because it wasn’t all dairy free, healthy stuff and I was thrilled because it was all sugar.

Mint Energy Balls

Since I was trying to be festive, I started with the idea of just adding mini red and green M&M’s…but then I saw the mint M&M’s, my brain went haywire and I had to have them. Turns out they are much larger and little harder to get to stay in the balls!

If you’re looking for other flavors, checkout this post of 21 Energy Balls >>

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups gluten free Udi’s gluten free oats
• 1/4 cup chia seeds
• 1 cup Once Again Nut Butter peanut butter
• ½ cup honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ½ cup mini carob chips (dairy free, delicious chocolate)
• ½ cup M&M’s

Personally I LOVE mint, so I’ll be making these year round!

Directions

• Mix oats, nut butter, vanilla and honey — just stir by hand, no mixers
• Add in your chocolatey goodness and stir
• Using a cookie scooper, pull out balls and place on wax paper (tried with a spoon and the scoop is 1000X faster)
• Allow to cool in fridge for 30 minutes
• Leftovers can be frozen, so you can pull out just what you need later!

Had to show off this super cool serving tray that my mom painted!!! I can 100% say she is equally as proud of her many hours, as I was of my 1 hour making balls. :)

Dietary options
*Obviously for a dairy free version, just use the delicious carob chips and not the M&M’s.
*Sans the M&M’s, you could use 1 tsp of mint extract for the flavor.
*For a totally vegan version, you could try maple syrup in place of the honey.

Not only is this a tasty little dessert, but it’s actually a great running fuel too! If you’re still in search of that whole food fuel option this is a good one because the oats and nut butter will help you to steadily utilize the honey, rather than getting a big sugar rush and crash.

Meanwhile, honey is a great bacteria killer and if you buy local it helps with allergies! So especially when you’re sneezing a ton it could be a great option!

I’d like to congratulate myself as this is the first time I made balls that actually came out in the shape of balls!!! And thus balls…it’s laughable no matter how many times you say it. So may your holidays be filled with balls cause it’ll make you smile.

Have you ever done a cookie swap?

Do you make energy balls?

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