Vegan Snowballs with Maple & Winter Spice
Vegan Snowballs. Because winter continues to lurk, the gloomy weather looks set to stay and a New Year’s to do list as long as my arm awaits. I figure I may as well be making the best of it all with this delicious, portable snack that just so happens to taste like Christmas.
Speaking of which, how was everybody’s Christmas?! Andrew and I caught a flight to London and drove down to my family home in Norwich. We spent a week there, trotting around Norwich sampling cafes and restaurants old and new, catching up with family and getting in as many snuggles as we could with my cat, Fang. It was delightful, and exactly what we needed after a busy few months.
There was also a whole host of cooking (we made Christmas dinner and survived! We also made my Dark Chocolate, Pear and Forest Fruit Cobbler and Lemon, Coconut and Olive Oil Cake for a big boxing day feast which went down a treat), indulging (WHY must there be so many tempting bowls of treats adorning every surface?) and even a trip to Cambridge, where we sampled some AMAZING Venezuelan and Nigerian street food and I was forced to purchase a nice, sensible puffer jacket to prevent myself from contracting frostbite.
I came into January feeling ready to smash my New Year’s goals- many of which related to the blog. Aaaaaand… then my site broke. My hosting company had some issues updating the cache, leaving me locked out of my admin area for days. I did everything blog related I could think of that didn’t involve actually entering my WordPress admin, but quickly found myself feeling really deflated by the whole thing. I started to wonder: maybe this was a sign that I should be focusing my attention elsewhere? After all, blogging alongside a full time job and part time study hasn’t been easy, and I didn’t always manage to balance the three as well as I would have liked to in 2016.
But then I realised that I need to stop being so hard on myself. I remembered how, recently, when a workmate asked me how I was going to spend my free weekend, she gawped at me in utter dismay as I mentioned the work I was planning on getting on with. I’m notoriously perfectionist and I put so much pressure on myself to be the best at everything I do- I always have done. What I needed was to remember WHY I started blogging instead of viewing it as another thing to tick off the to do list. And to congratulate myself for how much time and effort I have put into it against all odds, and the success and learning curves that have come with it.
And that was enough to give me back my motivation. By coincidence or fate (you decide) it was the next day that my site was restored to normal.
So I’m back! And now for these vegan snowballs. The thing we’re allllllll here for.
Well, in the midst of all the madness, I managed to conjure up these beauties. They taste DAYYYYUM delicious and really couldn’t be simpler (are energy balls ever anything less than wonderfully simple? Answer: no, they’re the perfect low key snack. YOU GO, energy balls.). Have vegan snowballs been done before? I don’t even know- but there was a gap in my life and my stomach and these totally filled them. Let’s just say that they’ve made an appearance on my ‘things I’m grateful for today list’ more than once. Not kidding.
Filled with desiccated coconut, oats, dates, maple syrup and a myriad of beautiful, warming winter spices, these vegan snowballs are sure to provide you with a delicious moment of solace this January. I hope you love them as much as I do. Let’s rustle up a batch and get down to WURK. We’ve got goals to smash!
- 75g oat flour (to make, just whizz 75g oats in a blender)
- 20g coconut flour
- 20g desiccated coconut plus 5g for rolling
- 1/2tsp ground clove
- 1/2tsp cinnamon
- 1/4tsp ground ginger
- 100g dates
- 80ml water
- 40ml maple syrup
- 30g coconut oil
- Mix the oat flour, coconut flour, desiccated coconut and spices together in a mixing bowl.
- In the blender, whizz together the dates, water, maple syrup and coconut oil.
- Pour the blended wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients, and stir together until well combined. This will take a bit of work!
- Roll the mixture into 12 even sized balls. You can then roll them in more desiccated coconut (optional), or leave them plain- both delicious!
- Protein: 1.5g
- Carbohydrate: 12g
- Fat: 4g
- DISCLAIMER: All macronutrient totals are accurately calculated based on the specific products I used. These totals may vary slightly depending on what brand supplier you use in the case of packaged goods. Therefore, all macronutrients given here are provided as a guideline only.
OOOH... there's more!
Comments
Leave a Comment
Coley @ Coley Cooks
3rd February 2017
These are so adorable! Love the pics. And they sound super yummy. I’m always looking for new healthy treat ideas to keep around the house. Yum!
fuellingthefork
4th February 2017
Thanks so much, Coley! I’m loving the moody photography style right now. And I feel ya- a girl’s gotta have healthy treats!