*NUT FREE* Christmas Pudding Energy Balls!

With all these scrumptious healthy desserts flying around the place containing all sorts of weird and wonderful super-ingredients, I often find myself being unable to eat most of them because the key ingredient tends to be nuts, of which I am allergic *cue pantomime 'aahh'.

One look at Deliciously Ella's blog and deli is enough to make me weep as so much of it contains the dreaded noisettes!

The main culprit being energy balls!

So I'm taking matters into my own hands and making my own super duper nut free energy balls which, by the way, taste insanely good and definitely feel like you're munching on a naughty treat rather than a healthy snack! (Minus the icing, but you can always ignore that bit if you're being well behaved).

They take about 40 minutes to conjure up and you don't even need to touch an oven!

So without further ado.

What you'll need //

250g dates
100g sunflower seeds
100g pumpkin seeds
2 heaped tbsp cacao powder
2 heaped tbsp desiccated coconut
1 tbsp honey

Topping//
Red & green ready-to-roll icing (Dr Oetker)
4 tbsp icing sugar

Makes about 15 puds!

What to do //

Whack all your ingredients into a blender. Blend on high power for 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides and whizz again for a further 45 seconds or until the mixture is fine enough to mush into smooth-ish balls!

Now for the fun bit! Take a heaped tablespoon of mixture and roll into balls in the palm of your hand.

Cool in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Roll tiny balls of red icing and, using a sharp knife, cut out little leaf shapes with the green.

Mix together 2 tbsp of the icing sugar and 1 tbsp of water. You want your icing quite thick to make sure it doesn't just run off the balls, so add more water OR icing sugar depending on if your mixture if too thin/thick.

Then simply spoon a small circle of icing onto each ball and leave to run slightly. Add your holly berries and leaves and LOOK, YOU HAVE A FAT LITTLE FESTIVE PUD!

I'll be talking about this more in my post on Friday but I've stored these babies in a Collective Dairy yogurt pot, ready to give to somebody who's hungry!

The 25 day countdown begins peeps!!

Betty x

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