If you’re like me, you have a serious love on for all things chocolate. Throw peanut butter into the mix and you can just shut the front door. The thing is that it’s really easy to demonize this beautiful, sweet treat. I mean, have you ever indulged and then immediately been flooded by guilt or shame? My friend, I’m here to tell you it’s ok. There’s no need to feel badly for having chocolate cravings. I’m here to also give you a heads up that there might be something else going on. Something you’re not even aware of, but can totally correct. And on top of all of this…I’m also going to give you an easy-peasy recipe for a chocolatey-delicious snack I like to call “I Love Chocolate” Balls. You ready?

So are your chocolate cravings out of control? Do you rearrange your meals, your exercise, your life around eating chocolate? I get it. I’ve been there. I too have come home and emptied a bag of chocolate chips into the peanut butter jar only to fish them all out with a spoon. The thing is, that your chocolate cravings may actually be your body trying to tell you something important.

Chocolate cravings are often an indicator that your body is deficient in magnesium.

Magnesium is an extremely important mineral that your body needs. Unfortunately due to poor diet and lifestyle choices, depleting minerals levels in our soils, and a focus on getting adequate calcium to prevent osteoporosis, many people today are deficient in magnesium.

Cacao, a key ingredient in chocolate, is an excellent dietary source of magnesium. This is likely why your body is instinctively telling you to reach for your favourite chocolate bar. Unfortunately, if you’re grabbing the wrong kind of chocolate you could be doing more harm than good. Let me explain…

The majority of conventional, regular ol’ chocolate bars contain a lot of sugar, and can wreak havoc on your hormones and skin. For your body to properly metabolize glucose, it needs to use magnesium. In fact, for every single glucose molecule in your body to be metabolized, your body uses 28 molecules of magnesium! (source) As you can see, this can lead to a vicious cycle, where you’re constantly reaching for chocolate because you’re craving magnesium, but the sugar-loaded chocolate bar is actually using more magnesium in your body than you are taking in.

So what should you do instead?

Try making these delicious, nutritious “I Love Chocolate” Balls for your next chocolate craving!

These beauties are full of whole, all-natural, unrefined ingredients. There’s absolutely no white sugar in this recipe, as each ball is sweetened with dates. This means that not only do you get fiber to help slow down the release of sugar into your bloodstream, but you also get the other vitamins and minerals within each date.

What I also love about this recipe is that it requires zero equipment to make it other than a bowl and a fork! I created and tested this recipe for a client who wasn’t as obsessed about filling her tiny apartment with kitchen appliances as some of us (ahem…me!). I wanted to make her a chocolatey, magnesium-rich treat that could be whipped up in a matter of minutes, and didn’t require a 15-piece food processor or $700 Vitamix.

And voila!

Print

“I Love Chocolate” Balls

Course Snack
Total Time 30 minutes

Ingredients

  • 10 tablespoon medjool dates, pitted and soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes
  • 1 tablespoon peanut butter
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 tablespoon hemp hearts
  • 2 tablespoon raw sunflower seeds roasted
  • 2 tablespoon raw cacao
  • 1 pinch of sea salt
  • 1-3 tablespoon raw cacao set aside, for rolling (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cut out the pits of the dates and add to a small bowl. Pour boiling water over top of the dates until they are all covered, and set aside for 10 minutes to soak.
  2. In a small pot over low heat, add 1 tablespoon of coconut oil, and 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. Melt and stir until well combined.
  3. If you’re adding sunflower seeds to the balls, I recommend toasting them first to get a deeper flavour. Pre-heat your oven to 375F. Spread the sunflower seeds out in a single layer on a baking sheet. Place in the heated oven and toast for 2-5 minutes, or until the seeds become fragrant. You can choose to stir them half way through to toast more evenly.
  4. Drain off the excess water the dates are soaking in. Using a fork, mash the softened dates. Add the melted coconut oil and peanut butter mixture, sunflower seeds, hemp hearts, vanilla, salt and raw cacao. Stir until all ingredients are well combined.
  5. To roll them, simply spoon out about 1 teaspoon of the mixture, and roll it into a ball using your hands. The balls will seem very oily due to the melted coconut oil, but they will firm up in the fridge.
  6. Place all the rolled balls onto a parchment-lined plate and set in the fridge to harden for 30 minutes.
  7. After 30 minutes, you can do the optional step of rolling the ball in extra raw cacao powder by adding 1-3 tablespoons of cacao to a small dish or plate and rolling the balls until they are well coated. (Or if you want to get CRAZY you can also try rolling them in chopped nuts, shredded coconut, or hemp hearts.)

Recipe Notes

Keep these babies stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week (They won’t last that long because they’re too tasty to resist)

This recipe above made 13 x 1-inch balls.

Are you going to make these? If you love chocolate, I think you should! Let me know how this recipe goes for you in the comments below.

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