Dark Chocolate Date Balls

Last Updated on February 3, 2020

What’s not to like about energy balls? These dark chocolate date balls are packed with nutritious ingredients meant to boost your energy during the day. It’s hard not to enjoy them.

While many energy ball recipes are meant to be super healthy and not so sweet, (like these peanut butter protein balls) this recipe adds a little extra sweetness to your day. By using a combination of dried dates, cocoa powder, and honey, these energy balls are the perfect treat for a special snack.

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The Perfect Sweet Treat To Add To Your Day

After reviewing a copy of Madame Labriskis’ cookbook ‘Fuel Your Day!’, I was inspired to incorporate dried dates into some of my favourite snack foods in order to take advantage of their natural sweetness as well as nutritional power.

While dates do have quite a bit of natural sugar, they are also loaded with iron, vitamin B6, potassium, and magnesium, making them the perfect candidate to be used in energy balls as a sweetener

Since the flavour of the dates can quickly become dominant, I thought what better way to mask that, (and encourage my kids to eat these) then by adding chocolate!

Are these chocolate date energy balls healthy then?

Well… sort of. These energy balls do contain more sugar than other recipes due to the dates and the honey. That said the recipe takes advantage of natural sweeteners and no processed ingredients making them a better option than store-bought snacks.

Too much of one thing is never good for you anyway, so if you make these chocolate date balls, add them to your rotation of energy ball flavours, an occasional sweet treat won’t hurt you!

What Do You Need?

As with most energy ball recipes, you’ll only need a handful of ingredients, most of which you probably already have at home if you cook or meal prep from scratch. You’ll need:

• 1 cup Dried Dates – soaked in water
• 3/4 cup Rolled Oats
• 2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 1 Tbsp Chia Seeds
• 1/4 cup Dark Chocolate Chips
• 2 Tbsp Natural Peanut Butter
• 1 Tbsp Raw Honey

How To Make Them

Soak the dried dates in warm water for about 5 minutes to help soften them up. Drain the water from the dates once soaked, then chop them up with a chef’s knife, or blitz them in a blender or food processor.

Measure out the remaining ingredients and mix them in with the chopped dates. The mixture should be firm, and tacky, and slightly crumbly, but not wet.

Form the mixture into small bite-sized balls, then chill them in the fridge for 10 minutes to set.

How long do these chocolate date balls keep?

Since there are no ingredients in the recipe that will quickly go bad(such as dairy, eggs, vegetables, etc), these energy balls will easily last up to two weeks in the fridge. That is if they even last that long!

If meal prepping, you can easily double the recipe and freeze half of the chocolate date balls for later.

More Energy Ball Recipes

• Peanut Butter Protein Balls

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5 from 3 votes

Dark Chocolate Date Balls

Using dried dates, cocoa powder, and peanut butter, these delicious little chocolate date balls are the perfect sweet treat to add to your weekly meal plan or snack rotation.

Course Snack Food

Cuisine Canadian

Keyword energy ball recipes with dates, energy balls

Prep Time 15 minutes

Chilling Time 10 minutes

Total Time 25 minutes

Servings 12 energy balls

Calories 103.5kcal

Author Chef Markus Mueller

Ingredients

• 1 cup Dried Dates soaked in water
• 3/4 cup Rolled Oats
• 2 Tbsp Cocoa Powder
• 1 Tbsp Chia Seeds
• 1/4 cup Dark Chocolate Chips
• 2 Tbsp Natural Peanut Butter
• 1 Tbsp Raw Honey

Instructions

• Soak the dried dates in warm water for about 5 minutes to help soften them up. Drain the water from the dates once soaked, then blitz them in a blender or food processor.
  
• Measure out the remaining ingredients and mix them in with the blitzed dates. The mixture should be firm, and tacky, but not wet.
  
• Form the mixture into small bite-sized balls, and chill them in the fridge for 10 minutes to set.
  

Notes

• Each chocolate date ball contains about 10 grams of sugar.