These cherry chocolate hazelnut balls are made with raw ingredients, perfect for curbing that sweet tooth in a healthy but tasty way.
This WIAW post definitely crept up on me. Short weeks are awesome in that kind of way. I’m expecting one of two things on all the WIAW posts today, either an excessive amount of cookies and sweets as people try to finish them up or, incredibly clean, detox kind of foods for those of us done with the sugar. I definitely fall into the latter category. Sugar be gone!
Just a pretty standard cereal bowl with Trader Joe’s shredded wheat, grapenuts, bananas, strawberries, some other nut/seed toppings and a small spoonful of Justin’s hazelnut butter. Also, lots of un-pictured coffee to get me through the first morning of work after 3 days of vacation.
Lunch:
A kale salad and dressing you’ll be seeing more of this week and a cheese quesadilla. Kale has never tasted so good after 3 days without any leafy greens.
Snack:
In an effort to not grab any more Godiva chocolates from the entire tin we have sitting in our kitchen, I made a new raw snack ball combination, cherry chocolate hazelnut. Delicious, satisfied my 2-3pm snack attack and it’s actually healthy. Beat that Godiva!
It’s disturbing how much fun I have photographing balls. I snacked on these while trying to figure out a feedburner issue that I discovered this afternoon. Apparently, my feed was broken for the past 4 or 5 days. By some miracle, I actually figured it out and fixed it myself (woohoo!) so sorry if you got a slew of posts all at once from the past few days. It should be working normally now.
Cherry Chocolate Hazelnut Balls
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup cashews
- 1/4 cup almonds
- 2 tablespoons Justin's chocolate hazelnut butter, or Nutella
- 2 tablespoons dried cherries
- 1/2 tablespoon chia seeds
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3/4 tablespoon maple syrup
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients except maple syrup in a food processor and process until finely chopped.
- Add in maple syrup and process until mixture just starts to form a ball.
- Pour dough into a small bowl and roll into balls.
- Keep refrigerated.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Dinner:
After a 3 mile treadmill run and some ab work, where I totally figured out the key to planks not totally sucking,
I had a small piece of leftover Christmas lasagna with more of that kale salad. I officially deem lasagna the most unappetizing food to photograph.
Tea for dessert with an episode of our new Netflix obsession, Breaking Bad. I’m on a Mad Men hiatus because the drama between Betty and Don was making me all anxious. Seriously. Cooking meth and cancer seem to be better storylines for me.
Are you still indulging in holiday treats or done with sugar too?
Anyone else watch Breaking Bad?
Gina Matsoukas is an AP syndicated writer. She is the founder, photographer and recipe developer of Running to the Kitchen — a food website focused on providing healthy, wholesome recipes using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets both digital and print, including MSN, Huffington post, Buzzfeed, Women’s Health and Food Network.
As always, yummy eats! :)
Thanks for sharing that recipe! I hope to try them very soon! :D
Seriously – every time you do your WIAWs all I want is for you to come make all my meals for me!
I’m thinking a service could be arranged ;)
Haha yessss!
Ummmm YES Please!!! These cherry bombs….lol or balls, look AMAZING! I’m heading to WFs’ today so I should get some dried cherries!! YUM!!
My kinda healthy grain free treat!
xxoo
yum – thanks for sharing the recipe! :)
I have had ice cream the last 2 nights, however, I did not have too many sweets over Christmas since I am gluten-free and there weren’t too many options that I was comfortable indulging in.
I went to town on some kale chips last night and it was so.freaking.good. Man, I missed kale these last few days.
I attempted to get into Breaking Bad when it first come out, but it was way too intense/depressing for me. And there was some really gory stuff. Maybe I need to give it another shot? Or maybe I should stick to 30 Rock and Modern Family. :)
Yeah, there was some definite gorey stuff in the first few episodes but that seems to have subsided (at least for now) since. Modern Family is hysterical, I used to watch that when we had cable, I should definitely see if that’s on Netflix.
I’ve been getting your feed all week I’m pretty sure, but glad you got that straightened out, it can be such a headache! Those balls sound tasty, I love the chocolate/ fruit combo a lot!
I think it was only email subscribers…what a pain tech issues can be!
Tea for dessert? What are you, some healthy living blogger? :P
Mike’s been watching Breaking Bad like it’s his job. I can’t get into it, though. The episode where the guy got his head crushed by a vending machine? No thanks.
I’m indulging a little, but I’m getting back on track. At least… I’m trying…
I LOVE Justin’s nut butter! Mmmm…
dried cherries and maple syrup and Nutella….swoon! :)