How come I’ve never done this before? It’s so good and so easy. And yummy, you-can’t-just-eat-one yummy. It’s just dried fruit and nuts…healthful.
This all happened when my morning gym mates decided to hold a Fat Tuesday breakfast after our 6 am class. I made deviled eggs, my old standby for early gym meals, but gave them a Cajun flavor sprinkling cayenne pepper after mixing the egg yolks with relish, mayo, mustard and Worcestershire sauce.
My friend Krista wanted to make peanut butter energy bites but I found recipes for mango energy bites and decided this seemed exotic and Mardi Gras-appropriate. It was also easy. No need to bake, all you need is a blender.
Uh…or so we thought.
Except, I misunderstood one ingredient and got dried mango instead of freeze dried. Details, details. What’s freeze-dried mango, anyway? (Well, you can buy it in Trader Joe’s, I discovered later.)
So when we threw the dried mango into the blender and yanked it up, it sounded like gravel in a cement mixer. Krista looked at me in alarm.
“I think I scratched up my blender!” I said, horrified.
Did you know dried mango will not chop into small pieces in a blender? Not even my heavy duty one.
So, laughing at our disaster in progress, we removed the unchoppable chunks of mango and sliced it by hand, I with my Chinese knife skills and Krista with a pair of scissors. It was no easier. Risking cut fingers we gained only a clump of pathetic, sticky mango chunks.
Earlier we had bickered about following recipes and exact measures. I said I was Asian and we don’t need measuring spoons for turmeric; you just sprinkle it in! Now we were quibbling about whether to throw the sad mango back in with or separate from the other ingredients. Fearing more failure, we agreed to first grind everything else without the mango.
The raw cashew, dates and coconut blended into fairly regular, small pieces.
“How is this going to roll into a ball?” Krista asked. The recipe called for one tablespoon of maple syrup or water. Only one tablespoon?
Then we threw our sticky, big chunks of mango in, added the syrup (under Krista’s watchful eye that I didn’t add a drop more) and miraculously a ball was formed. Yay!
I scooped up a teaspoon of the mixture, made a small ball, handed it to my skeptical friend and her eyes lit up. With a big smile, she said, “It’s gooood.”
It was delish. That was the verdict from the rest of our gym mates too. And since we didn’t have enough, I made a new, improved batch the next day.
This time I soaked the mango for 10 minutes and dried it before blending it quite effortlessly. My trusty blender is fine. The scratch marks were just the gooey parts of mango stuck to the side.
Without Krista around, I improvised and threw in lime zest and added roasted almonds (didn’t have enough cashew), more dates. She loved the results too.
So…What’s An Energy Ball?
Turns out an energy ball is really only packed, mixed nuts (cashews, almonds, walnuts) with something gooey (dates, mango, peanut butter.) If necessary one tablespoon of maple syrup or water is added to bind the ingredients together. I added turmeric for color and lime zest for an extra zing. I think sea salt would be fun too.
Here’s my revised recipe gleaned from internet experts.
Mango Energy Balls
¾ cups raw cashew
½ cup roasted almonds
1 package of dried mango (7 ounces)
½ cup dried shredded coconut, another ½ cup to roll energy balls
1 cup dates
Zest from 1 lime
½ teaspoon ground turmeric (optional)
1 tablespoon maple syrup or water
Soak mango in warm water for about 10 minutes. Dry thoroughly with paper towels.
In a blender add mango and pulse until mango is cut into small pieces. Add cashews, almonds, coconut, dates, lime zest and turmeric.
Add syrup or water and blend until contents bind together. (It doesn’t need to roll into a ball.)
Remove contents. With a spoon, scoop out about a tablespoon, roll between palms to make a ball. Roll over coconut to coat each ball. Serve.
NOTES
Ingredients:
Coconut: I used dried shredded coconut from Shoppers. Didn’t want the damp or frozen kind.
Here is the dried mango:
Freeze dried mango (below) was an ingredient one recipe used. Substitute 1 packet of freeze dried mango if you don’t want to use dried mango and go through the soaking, etc. Don’t worry about the size, as long as you aren’t talking about 2-pound bags. It should be about a packed cup of mango.
