Tarry Health Fitness, Weight Loss, Workouts and Healthy Eating
‘Tis the season for giving,
for memories,
for making our yard look like a light explosion,
for mugs of candy cane green tea while watching “Four Christmases”
for holiday-ifying all of my favorite recipes….
The gingerbread amazeball had to happen ?
Sometimes it’s fun to stick with the usual snack standbys:
-egg burritos
-salad beast
-yogurt parfaits
-jerky
–homemade energy bars
However, when the holidays roll around, I feel inspired to add some seasonal pizazz to my usual rotation. I’ll walk on the wild side and add cranberries with an orange vinaigrette to my salads, fresh roasted chilies to my egg burritos -in Tucson, roasted chilies scream “Christmas!”- and some crumbled cookies into my yogurt parfaits ? For amazeballs, the possibilities are endless. I especially love the pumpkin, cranberry orange and blueberry lemon variety.
Gingerbread Amazeballs Protein Snack
I’ve been on a huge gingerbread kick lately, so I thought I’d add some of those spices to my beloved protein-packed snack.
Bonus: you can shape the ballz into adorable little gingerbread folks.
Cute, huh?!
One lesson I had to learn the hard way: egg white protein is not good for baking or recipe creation. I’ve been loving the Jay Robb egg white protein, but if you try to bake with it or combine it with various textured ingredients, it transforms into a gooey taffy-like substance. It’s best with some type of milk or in my beloved breakfast cookie cereal. For everything else (like these amazeballs), I alternate between Vega and Sun Warrior.
Molasses Makes the Gingerbread
What takes these amazeballs from “spiced” to “gingerbread city” is the addition of molasses. Not only does it yield a warm chocolate hue and sweet flavor, but molasses also has a surprising amount ofhealth benefits.
1 tablespoon of molasses will give you 20% of your recommended calcium for the day, 22% the recommended amount of magnesium and about 40% of your iron requirement (source). Molasses is also used as a natural healing remedy for acne, depression, anxiety, chronic ailments and heart palpitations. Nice coincidence that our holiday cookies have some molasses boosts amidst the sugar in what can be a stressful time of year ?
Hope you enjoy these! If you put them on the holiday tray and let them masquerade as cookies, I won’t tell anyone.
Gingerbread amazeballs
A high protein portable snack with holiday spice!
- Prep Time: 5
- Total Time: 5
- Yield: 5 1x
Scale
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons dry ingredient (oats, shredded coconut and almond meal all work well)
- 2 tablespoons vanilla protein powder (recommend brown rice, Vega or whey protein)
- 2 tablespoons nut butter of choice
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon molasses
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon each cloves and ginger
- pinch of nutmeg
- pinch of sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Pulse all ingredients in a mini food processor until a dough forms.
- Using a melon ball scooper, scoop into ball shapes and roll with your hands until smooth.
- If you like, flatten the balls and cut into shapes using a cookie cutter ?
- Store covered in the fridge for up to five days.
Notes
- Honey works for these, too, but I’d halve the honey and add a little coconut oil. Otherwise, the mixture is too sweet.
- Instead of cloves, ginger and nutmeg, you can also use 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2
See ya later with day 4 of giveaways!
