Raw Vegan Energy Cookies (Or Energy Bars): An Easy Healthy Sweet Tooth Alternative

One of the top requests I get for posts, food-wise, is for "healthier" alternatives to desert favorites. I love raw vegan deserts because they're easier to make than the baked variety, a million times more nutritious, and an easy conversion. Someone may side-eye a vegan taco, but a cookie is a cookie! This is a super simple recipe that's excellent for bringing with you as a snack or wrapped in cello bags with a red ribbon or displayed in a jar, they'd make an excellent Christmas gift.

Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Dry Almonds
1 TSP Cinnamon
Pinch of Sea Salt to Taste
1/4 Cup Pitted Dates
3 Tablespoons Cacao Nibs
2 Tablespoons another Nut of your choice
2 Tablespoons a Seed of your choice

Optional: 2-3 Tablespoons Dried Fruit of your choice. Cranberries or Raisins work well.

Additional Energy Boosters: Add 1/4 Tsp Maca Powder and/or 1 Tsp cacao powder

Directions: Pulse your almonds, cinnamon and salt into chunks in your food processor (I use my Vitamix Blender). Add your other nut and seeds, dates and dried fruit and pulse this for a few seconds. Everything should stick together perfectly. From there, flatten your batter into cookies and you're done! You can also flatten this into bars and freeze it for future snacking.

Tip: As long as you have the dates as your binder you can basically mix up any combination of nuts to make your protein rich cookies. Add more cocoa powder for a chocolatey batch (like I have pictured here), add protein powder, play with what you have on hand for different varieties. I've made these by grinding soaked, then dehydrated buckwheat into a powder and it came out delicious!

Enjoy your cookies! I think I need to make and freeze some batches for emergency snacking!

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