The Craftiest Workshop

I text chat with my mom most mornings. Quite often, when she signs off, it is to start baking or get some food prepped for lunch. Recently, she mentioned she was going to make some date balls.

Just the mention of date balls brought forth a strong memory of our family gathered at Christmas. We had one of those tiered trays that you can put baking on. I can see the coconut covered date balls in amongst the scuffles, jam jams and shortbread with candied cherries. My memory has me eyeing up the last date ball and scarfing it down as it was one of my favourite delicacies of the Christmas season.

Unbeknownst to my childhood self was that I wasn’t eating something bad for me. These date balls have no added refined sugar and even have some protein and fibre.

I asked my mom to send me the recipe and got my husband to pick up a bag of pitted dates from Costco.

I finally got around to making them this past week.

Note: you have to watch not to scramble the eggs. I had to make the recipe twice to figure out how not to do it.

Date Balls

Ingredients

1 cup of dates chopped

1/3 cup margarine

2 eggs beaten

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup walnuts chopped

2 cups Rice Krispies

1 tsp vanilla

shredded sweetened coconut for rolling in

Directions

Cook chopped dates and margarine on low heat till boiling.

Tricky part: In a 2 cup glass measuring cup, beat two eggs. Spoon half of the hot date mixture into the eggs whisking the whole time. Remove the pot from the stove and add the egg mixture to the rest of the date mixture. Keep stirring so that the eggs do not start to scramble. Once incorporated, put the pot back on the heat. Keep stirring. After about 5-7 min the mixture will have softened the dates and thickened.

Remove pot from stove and add 1 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and 2 cups Rice Krispies. Stir together well.
While the mixture is cooling enough to form balls by hand, prepare a parchment lined baking sheet. Put some coconut in a shallow bowl or plate.

Grab a small handful of the mixture and squish together to form a ball that stays together. If you cooked the date mixture long enough, the mixture will be fairly sticky. Roll the ball between your palms to get a nicely rounded ball. Roll the ball in the coconut. Place on the lined cookie sheet and repeat.

Place the cookie sheet in the fridge to cool completely. I got about 20 balls but mine were fairly large. These date balls also freeze well.