- It's getting to that time of year
when you're probably having to do longer miles on your bike
and then training throughout your session
is going to be necessary.
And yes, you do have the option of pre-packaged bars,
gels, energy drinks, et cetera,
but have you ever though about making your own homemade fuel
to take with your on your ride?
Well, today, we're gonna be covering a very simple recipe
that doesn't even involve any baking.
I'm going to be making some raw food energy balls
that will provide you with protein, fats,
carbohydrates and even a little bit of fibre.
Before we get started, we should cover very quickly
what you need.
And yes, no oven is required,
but you do need a blender, a fairly sturdy one,
that's gotta get through nuts and through dates.
Possibly a saucepan if your coconut oil
is a little bit hard, 'cause you'll want to melt that
if it's somewhere a little bit chilly.
Then a board for laying the balls on afterwards.
And some bowls, a tablespoon for measuring
and a cup of some sort for measuring
your ingredients as well.
And now, most importantly, on to the ingredients.
And you're going to require 100 grammes
or half a cup of whole almonds.
I personally use ones with the skin on
because it's a little bit more fibre.
100 grammes or half a cup of cashew nuts,
then 200 grammes or one cup of dates,
preferably medjool dates and I'll talk more about those
in a moment, then 200 grammes or a cup
of raisins or dried apricots, it's entirely up to you,
four tablespoons of raw cacao powder
and then two tablespoons of coconut oil
that needs to be a soft consistency
so it can mix in with your ingredients
and then two and a half tablespoons of almond butter.
And then finally, for rolling your balls,
you want a little bit of spare raw cacao powder
or some desiccated coconut.
Okay, if you're somewhere warm,
you won't need to worry about this,
but if your coconut oil is a little bit hard
and more like coconut fat
then you're gonna need to melt it slightly.
So I've already put this in a sauce pan, melted it.
You don't want it to be too hot,
so just put that to one side
once you're getting everything else ready.
Leave that for a moment.
And the same for pre-preparation comes with the dates.
Now, I did say ideally medjool dates
'cause they are as they come off the tree.
They're fresh, they're not actually a dry fruit
which is something I didn't know.
Okay, moving on to the nuts,
it's now time to get blitzing.
So I have a half a cup of cashews and half a cup of almonds
in here ready to go
and I'm just simply going to place them into this blender.
Now, I personally prefer to use something like this
rather than a Nutribullet or a liquidiser
because I find the nuts get a little bit
stuck in the bottom if you are using something like that.
(blender whirring)
Now obviously, it's up to you
quite how ground you want your nuts,
and I have cheated in the past when I had a blender
that was struggling, and I've actually
used some ground almonds,
so they're pretty much ready-made,
but if you can do them, get a little bit more texture
and again, it is your choice.
And the thing with nuts,
you can mix in some other nuts.
Cashews are great for holding things together
'cause they're slightly,
the texture works really well in these balls.
I use almonds as well, but you can put in some pecans
or walnuts, which are really nutritious.
So have a little bit of experimenting.
Use what nuts you like, really.
Okay, now you're jut going to put those nuts
back into the bowl and leave them to one side.
You can even add in, if you wanted,
some oatmeal or some oats and then ground them up.
Depends on the texture, but that's the great thing
about these, you can experiment with what you like.
And like I said, which nuts you have,
but it's worth noting, the drier the mixture,
so the more ground it is
then the more it'll absorb liquid-wise,
so you might need to compensate
with a little more dried fruit
or a little bit more coconut oil.
It's only a little bit of an experiment
but I promise you, these quantities, these do work.
Gonna leave that to one side now,
and then it's time for the blender to do some hard work.
It's gonna get through this dried fruit.
Now, I have soaked these dates a little bit
so hopefully the blender will be okay with that,
but you don't really want to add in any water,
so you an always add liquid later
but you can't really take it out,
so probably best to strain them first
if you've got lots of liquid.
And I have spent many an hour
having to do a few dates at a time
when I've only had a blender as opposed to a MagiMix
and it was pretty time-consuming and rather frustrating.
So a bit of coconut oil
that is actually still melted, just about,
and then pour that in.
Okay, let's see if
this little machine can
cope with these dates.
Okay, it was pretty sticky,
but I'm gonna add in some almond butter in a moment,
which will hopefully just help the blender
finish off with its blending of the fruit.
And it doesn't have to be to a completely smooth pace,
'cause a little bit of texture can be quite nice.
So now it's time to add in the almond butter.
And a tip with almond butter,
always give it a good stir
'cause quite often, you'll find the oil sits on top
and you can end up with more oil
in your ingredients than you want.
So make sure it's nicely mixed up.
(blender whirring) (light jazzy music)
Okay, it looks fine.
It actually starts to form a little bit more of a paste
once you've added the almond butter,
so now it's time to add in the raw cacao powder.
You can actually get away without even using any
raw cacao powder if you don't like the flavour of chocolate
or you want to keep them
a little bit less on the sweeter side, I suppose,
but when you got the opportunity,
why not add a little bit of
healthy chocolate flavour, I say.
Three tablespoons so far, but I'm gonna give it
a bit of a blend and see how that comes out.
So obviously, we have to add the nuts back in in a moment.
Okay, that looks like a pretty delicious gooey paste.
Now it's time to add in the nuts
and once I've added the nuts,
I might have to change the consistency slightly,
but we'll see how it deals with this.
(blender whirring) (light jazzy music)
That's if the blender can cope with it.
(blender whirring) (light jazzy music)
Now as you can see, it's struggling a little bit.
Now, at this stage,
if you do have a slightly small machine
and you've got quite a lot of ingredients,
you can always just take it out into a big bowl
and use a spoon and use a bit of elbow grease
to get there.
I reckon we can add the rest
of that raw cacao powder, which makes me happy.
But that's why I just added the three tablespoons
to start with because you can then
wait a see a little bit as to how the
texture is turning out.
So, just adding one more spoonful.
See how this comes out.
I think we are pretty much there.
It's quite a good idea.
You can only tell so much from staring.
Actually, taking it up when it gets a bit messy
and as you can see, they are very greasy on the outside
so you just want to cover them with something
to kinda seal them.
I've got two options here.
I've got some raw cacao powder
in a bowl that I've prepared earlier
and also some desiccated coconut.
And you could also use some ground nuts,
if you ground a few extra at the beginning,
you could roll it in that
but I'm just gonna use these two today.
And then just roll them around a little bit.
So they're nicely coated.
Pop them in the tray that you've got ready-made.
The consistency is key here.
So, as much as there is an ingredients list,
everything does vary a little bit
so make sure you do roll nicely
and they'll just stick together like this
and the great thing about these,
you can stick them in the freezer to make sure
they set nicely, but you can also
leave them in the freezer
and they'll keep for, I guess six months or so?
Mine never get to keep that long
'cause I must admit, I eat them before then.
And also, if you are somewhere warm,
hard to imagine right now,
but you can put them in the freezer
and you can take them straight from the freezer
and put them in your jersey pocket
so by the time you get to that stage in your ride
when you're a little bit hungry,
they're probably gonna be a perfect consistency
before getting a little bit too runny.
I know I've already mentioned that
you don't have to stick exactly to these ingredients
but another thing you could add in,
some instant coffee, as long as it's ground,
and then mix that into the mixture
'cause it gives you that bit of a caffeine hit
when you're out on a ride,
so then it really does encompass everything.
And you might think that buying all these ingredients
such as dates, almond butter, coconut oil is expensive,
but a large pot of each of those goes a long way.
And if you actually add up how often
you buy an energy bar that's two pounds, $2,
I thnk that's pretty much just one of these bowls
in how many you've got here.
So, value for money.
Plus you know exactly what is going into your nutrition.
When it comes for when to use,
I have basically made these as cycling balls.
That's when I tend to use them.
You can use them for running,
but just remember there's obviously dates and nuts,
so it takes a little bit longer to digest
and you might get a few GI issues
if you're trying to go for a run straight after.
But just bear in mind what works for you.
And most importantly, enjoy.
And talk of enjoying, you can even stick these
into a supper party at the end.
If you drizzle in some melted dark chocolate over the top.
It's a pretty healthy after supper snack
to have with your coffee.
Hopefully you've enjoyed the video
and more importantly, you've gone away
and made some of these and enjoyed them.
I know I'm going to.
Give us a thumbs up like if you have.
Click the globe to subscribe
to make sure you get all of our videos
and if you do like some of the ingredients
that's in this, we've made a video
on superfoods for triathletes
including things such as raw cacao.
You can find that video just down here.