At the moment I am triathlon training. The other day a guy from a food company asked me why I don’t buy energy bars. When I explained that it’s because I can make them myself at home, he seemed utterly flabbergasted. Seriously, how hard is it to mix a few ingredients together, roll them into balls and whack ’em in the freezer? Mindboggling.
Spend less than 10 minutes making some of these and control what you put in your body at the same time as gleefully sticking it to Big Food. A win all round (apart from for their profits). <wicked cackle>
You will see snaps of edibles like this all over Instagram, with hashtags along the lines of #energyballs, #eatclean, #superfood and spurious things about protein. As you know, we don’t believe in ‘detoxing’ over here, so make these for no other reason than that they’re properly delicious, super portable and easy to cram into the mouth while running out the door to spent an hour in Tartarus a Kettlercise class (that shit works btw).
I call them yumbles because they are little balls of yum, with everything jumbled together.
Let’s go.
Yumbles
1 cup rolled oats
0.5 cup milled flax seeds
0.5 cup crunchy peanut butter (preferably one from the worthly/healthy end of the spectrum – just peanuts and maybe a pinch of salt; not a jar loaded with palm oil or sugar)
0.3 cup runny honey
PLUS whatever extra morsels you fancy. I like a teaspoon of vanilla extract and half a cup of chocolate chips, and maybe some toasted coconut. Your imagination and the depth of your wallet are really the only limits here. Raisins, cinnamon (or the two combined for an oatmeal-raisin-cookie vibe), raw cacao or matcha powder, orange or lemon zest, protein powder if that’s your thing… I don’t think I’m yet ready to talk about chia seeds on this blog but what you do in your own kitchen is your business. There are plenty of fancy nut butters around these days, so you could substitute one of those for the PB. As long as your final mixture has a rollable consistency, you’ll be golden.
Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper and make some space in the freezer.
Put all your ingredients in a bowl and give them a mix until well combined. Take clumps of the mixture and roll into balls. If you find that it’s too sticky, putting the bowl in the fridge for 20 minutes or so should make things easier. This quantity of mixture makes around 15 depending on the number of additions you’ve made.
Put your balls on the baking sheet (as it were) then pop it in the freezer for about an hour. Once frozen, transfer the yumbles to your receptacle of choice to prevent freezer burn – ziplock bag, tupperware, whatever – and store until a craving strikes. It won’t be long.
