Tasty and mostly simple food for the whole family.

Tasty, healthy, simple, verstile, practical, seasonal, fun food for all to enjoy. I will endeavour to make things gluten-free, dairy-free (cow's milk only here, I'm not super-human), and low sugar as able. I hope others feel motivated to add their recipes to this collection so we can all try them. Thank you!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

No-Bake Oatmeal Cookie Balls (Gluten-free/Dairy-free)


These are tasty little numbers adapted from a recipe given to me by Mia's Naturopath, Dr. Molly Gray.  We love her and everyone else we have seen at their clinic.  Dr. Gray has been especially amazing in how she treats Mia like a full human and makes her visit there extremely positive and cooperative, vs. doing things to her whether Mia wants them or not.

So these were supposed to be a yummy treat that Mia would love to eat and just pack her with nutrients and such, but it turns out she wasn't into them.  Toddlers, right?  But me?  I absolutely loved them!  Being the food enthusiast/Physical Therapist that I am, I brought them to work and shared them with my colleague and about half of my patients and unanimously we all agreed that they were amazing!  To borrow from Cooks Magazine: "Tasters referred to them as 'delicious', 'abundently satisfying' and 'just right, such that you eat one and are completely sated'".  Really, try them for yourself if you have an extra 3 minutes to spare.  That is all it will take.  Bonus, these are the kind of thing that you could put just about anything into and in fact, I used the little bits of about 4 different types of nuts and trail mixes just to clean the cupboard. 

Oatmeal No-Bake Cookie Balls
  • 1 cup whole oats (use certified gluten-free if needed)
  • 1c mixed nuts (I used salted pumpkin seeds, walnuts, pecans and pine nuts)
  • 4 dates, pitted
  • 1/2-1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • 2-3 Tbls pure maple syrup
Directions
1) in food processor or blender, blend up the oats and nuts until they are finely chopped; add dates and blend until they are also finely chopped.

2) add vanilla and 2T syrup and pulse a few times to combine.  This will still be very coarse in presentation (see photo below).  Add more syrup as you see fit.

3) scoop up small hand fulls and smash into balls.

Pulsed without vanilla or maple syrup

with the vanilla and maple
 
too beautiful not to add a picture of them!  Reminds me of working on a Kibbutz many moons ago....

scoop up a handful....
and smash it into a ball!


Enjoy!!

    2 comments:

    Lisa Eaton said...

    So I just whipped these up. No dates in this house, so I used raisins. The dates probably add more moisture, so I found the balls a little crumbly. So I added 1 Tbsp-ish of peanut butter, which totally solved the problem. They hold their shape without being sticky. And, only a hint of peanut butter. We'll see what Lady C has to say.

    Fawn said...

    Lisa- anxious to see what Lady C t hought... I added a slight drizzle of maple syrup for extra binding since I was thinking Mia would want them and she rejects peanut butter in all its forms. Given these will be for big kids in the future, I think a bit of 'butter will go into future batches!