The other night, I had the absolute pleasure of joining several other Vancouver mom bloggers at Whole Foods for evening with Aspen Clean, a local eco-friendly cleaner and cleaning company.  While there, Whole Foods totally spoiled us with delicious green smoothies, all kinds of yummy nutrient-packed salads, and the yummiest ever {vegan, gluten-free} cookie dough balls.  Our healthy eating specialist, Sarah, made them while we watched, and not only were they quick and easy to whip up, but the giant bowl full disappeared in a matter of minutes – a sure sign of their deliciousness. As soon as I tasted {my first} one, I knew that Grae would just love them.  So today, we got our ingredients and whipped up a batch.  My suspicions were right – Grae did  love them.

Here’s our lineup of ingredients….  Pecans, dates {soaked in water}, coconut, raisins, sea salt, cinnamon, coconut oil, and vanilla.  Now, I have to say that the original recipe includes coconut manna (also known as coconut butter) and not coconut oil…  In fact, our healthy eating specialist explained that coconut oil is just the fat squeezed out of the coconut meat, while coconut manna is the coconut meat and fat combined, making it much more nutrient-rich.  The trouble is, our local grocery store doesn’t carry coconut manna, so we had to improvise.  While maybe not as healthy, the recipe still turned out great!

Anyways, onto actually making the cookie dough boys!  First up, we drained {almost all of} the water our dates had been soaking in and blended them in our food processor.  (Word to the wise, be sure your dates don’t still have the pits in them before blending. Oy.)

We processed them until nearly smooth, but not perfectly pureed.  Because it was such a small batch, it did take several rounds of stopping the machine, scraping down the sides, and then doing it again, but that just meant more jobs for my little helper, which she of course loved.

With the date paste saved in a separate bowl for later, Miss G added our coconut and pecans to the food processor.  Call us lazy, but we didn’t even wash out the processor bowl in between as it seemed like sort of an unnecessary step.

Then we pureed the coconut and pecans until they were meal-like.

Next up, Grae dumped all of the other ingredients (save the raisins) into the food processor with the coconut/pecan mixture.

Then we processed it all until it started to come together in a mass.

Here’s what it looked like when done.

The last step was to mix the raisins in by hand.

With our dough complete, we rolled it into balls using about a tablespoon of the mixture at a time.

And because Miss G is no longer a huge fan of raisins, before mixing them in, we set aside a part of the mixture.  To set Grae’s balls apart from the other, she rolled them in coconut, which was a lovely addition.

The verdict?  Delicious!  They’re sweet and satisfying just like a good dessert, but come sans all of the sugar and fat regular desserts have.  A definite success!

{Nutrient-packed} Cookie Dough Boys

(*this is a Health Starts Here recipe from Whole Foods)

• 1/4 cup of date paste (we used 5 large majool dates)

• 2 cups of pecans
• 1 cup of unsweetened coconut flakes

• 1 tablespoon of coconut manna (or as we used, 1/2 tablespoon of coconut oil)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• dash of sea salt

• 1/2 cup of raisins

Soak the dates in room temperature water for an hour (you can cut down soaking time by using hot water), drain off almost all of the water, and purée the fruit until fairly smooth.  Set aside.

Blend pecans and coconut flakes in a food processor until meal-like.  Add all other ingredients, save the raisins.  Process until the mixture starts coming together in a large mass.

Dump dough into a large bowl and incorporate raisins by hand.  Taking 1 tablespoon scoops, roll the dough to create balls.  Roll in coconut or crushed nuts if desired.

Eat, refrigerate, or freeze.

Enjoy!

♥ 

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