Recipes
Superfood Energy Balls
Superfood Energy Balls are the perfect healthy treat! No-bake energy balls are gluten-free and perfect for healthy snacks and breakfast on the go! This is the ONLY Energy Ball recipe you’ll ever need, plus six no-bake energy ball flavor ideas! I will post my own video here shortly.
I consider myself a bit of an energy ball aficionado. These sweet, no-bake treats take minutes to throw together, are filled with good-for-you ingredients, and make for quick, portable breakfasts and snacks. I have made dozens of batches of energy ball recipes over the years, and while I’m constantly looking for fun ways to vary them up, inevitably, they come back to one simple, foolproof formula. Today, I’m sharing that master recipe for energy balls, along with all sorts of tasty ways to use it to create different energy ball flavors.
Types of Energy Balls
Energy balls go by a variety of different names; energy bites, protein balls, power balls, and vegan truffles being but a few. There are dozens of recipes for energy balls across the web, several of which can be found on a certain website that rhymes with “swell dated.”
As much as I love trying different energy ball recipes and techniques, today’s basic energy ball recipe is the little black dress of them all. It’s comprised of four basic ingredients:
Primary Ingredients in Superfood Energy Balls
Raw Rolled Oats
While you can use other flours, oatmeal is the champion. It’s filling, inexpensive, versatile, and gives me the sensation that I’m eating oatmeal cookie dough instead of a healthy snack. YES.
Nut butter. Nut butter, like almond, sunflower, pumpkin or tahini butter, helps bind the balls, adds healthy fats, and makes the energy balls sustaining. It’s also delicious.
Sticky liquid sweetener (a.k.a. honey or pure maple syrup). I use honey the most, but maple syrup is a really nice option if you’d like vegan energy balls or are making a recipe like these Pumpkin Energy Balls where the maple syrup’s flavor complements the other ingredients.
Mix-ins!
This is where tasty experimentation begins. I like to do a combination of superfood additions, such as flax seeds, hemp and chia seeds, along with ingredients I love purely for their taste, like cacao nibs, chopped dried fruit, and did I cashews?
Let’s start with the oats. I use and recommend Bob’s Red Mill’s Gluten-Free Rolled Oats because they are high quality, high in fiber, and, for those with dietary concerns, truly gluten-free. One of the questions I receive most often from readers is how I can state that my oatmeal recipes are gluten-free when most oats on the market run the risk of being cross-contaminated with gluten, a real concern for those diagnosed with celiac.
My answer is Bob’s, Red Mill. Their oats are produced in a safe, certified gluten-free facility.
Even if you don’t have a gluten intolerance, I still recommend Bob’s, because the company is dedicated to sourcing the best possible ingredients with the highest nutritional profile, including their hearty rolled oats.