5 Clean Eating Dessert Recipes

I had been planning this post for awhile, but it grew a bit larger after a fun idea from Lindsey to host a Pin It Party! Make sure you head on over to Lindsay’s to visit lots of awesome blogs and pin away for inspiration.

After declaring that I would give baking another try, I opened up Pinterest and pulled out a few of the recipes that I thought were right up my alley — gluten free, dairy free, healthy(ish) and made with ingredients I had on hand! None use white sugar and most use either a little stevia or a little honey for sweetness combined with fruit…as with most things some were successful…others not so much.

Honey Ginger Almond Date Cookies
I followed the recipe from Keepin It Kind, minus using ginger powder instead of fresh ginger. Some flavor was missing in these for me personally…um not that I didn’t totally eat them mind you, but they aren’t on my list to make again. If I were to try the recipe again I would have made them super thin and thus more crisp like a ginger snap!

Superfood Godess BitesThe original recipe comes from DAMY Healthy and was a little different than many of the protein balls I have seen. I was excited to try it because this one did not use peanut butter…I get enough of that all day long, so it’s good to have treats with other ingredients.

RESULT: Yum, but modifying to work for me!  I have no final picture of this recipe because I got so frustrated with attempting to turn it in to the pretty little balls that everyone shows that I just dumped it in a container and put it in the fridge. <<TADA that was actually the key, as after putting in the fridge I could start shaping it to balls. I need some tips from skill masters like Lindsey to understand how to make them pretty enough that anyone besides me would eat it.

I would probably make a much LARGER batch next time around as it takes a lot of work to process those dates!

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 Cups Pitted Dates
• 1/4 Cup Hemp Hearts
• 1/4 Cup Chia Seeds
• 1/4 Cup Flax Seeds
• 2 Tbsp Virgin Coconut Oil
• 2 Scoops Vega Energizing powder
• 1/4 Cup water

Directions:

• Soak dates in water to soften.
• Place all ingredients in the food processor and blend until smooth dough.
• Remove from food processor and put in fridge to firm up.
• Remove and roll in to 1 inch balls.
• Place in a sealed-tight container and store in the refrigerator.

A 2nd protein ball option:

• 1 cup almond butter or natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup honey (raw, if you can find it)
• 3 cups dry oatmeal (pulverize dry oats in a blender or coffee grinder first, which helps form a cookie dough texture in the final balls)
• 2-3 scoops vanilla protein powder
• 1/3 cup water

Chocolate Cookie Dough Fudge
The title of this recipe from DAMY “Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough” had me VERY excited as it would be another recipe with chickpeas to serve as an alternative to my dessert hummus. However, in the end it DID NOT taste like fudge at all. I ate it mind you because I don’t waste food, but it didn’t hold a candle to my hummus and only a liar would call it fudge.

It took some time in the fridge to get it solid enough to create any kind of bar. I ended up keeping in the freezer to pull out when desired.

RESULT: Not making this again. I love my chickpeas, but I’ll stick to my dessert hummus. This was just plain false advertising. 

PB Crispy Rice Treats
After looking at a variety of recipes, I settled on one from Dashing Dish that would combine all my favorite things, nut butter, Vega and cereal, sans the dairy!! These tasted like heaven, but I couldn’t quite get them to stay in tact…so I mostly just made little balls as I went in for a handful.