Just a 5 minute prep and you can keep these real food blueberry energy bites stashed away in the pantry for easy snack packing!
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Simple staple snacks for busy kids
For the most part, I’m a super no fuss mom when it comes to snacking. I’d rather focus on the 3 meals of the day, and if a snack is needed, give the kids a simple handful of fruit and cheese. So if I’m going to actually prepare a homemade snack, it needs to be easy prep, and double bonus points for pantry storage! We just kicked off our summer break last week, and packed these fun blueberry energy bites for one of our beach days. They were devoured, and made such a fun snack change up. I hope you get a chance to try them, whether its for your summer road trip or those school lunchboxes this fall!
An easy pantry snack
I just love any homemade food that I can make that doesn’t take up room in my fridge or freezer. That is hard to do with real food, but between homemade granola, my trail mix, and coconut clusters, I have a few easy grab and go snacks that pack easily for school lunches or road trips. Energy bites also store in the pantry well, and I put a spin on the classic cashew/date snack bites that we have all come to love with a fun blueberry flavor! Just perfect for little hands!
How to Make Blueberry Energy Bites
A very simple handful of ingredients (please be sure to read the section below titled “Ingredient Sourcing” for help on making sure you don’t blow your budget on this stuff!) and a blender is all you need! You’ll put everything but the blueberries into your food processor, and blend to make the energy bite mixture – it should stick together when you pinch it. After you pulse in the freeze dried blueberries, you just scoop and roll the bites up! That’s it! I love that these energy bites can store in the pantry, fridge, or freezer. It’s up to you!
Can I use fresh blueberries?
Believe me, in the height of summer, I’m all about using our fresh Michigan blueberries! Fresh blueberries would just make these energy bites a sloppy mess though with all the juices. You could dehydrate your own blueberries, or freeze dry your own blueberries. I have had success in freeze drying my own fruit by just putting a tray of blueberries into the freezer (uncovered). You let them “freeze dry” for about 2-3 weeks, and they should be ready to go once you bring them to room temp and let the condensation dry off them. These days, you can buy freeze dried fruit just about anywhere, and for not that bad of a price in some places! I grab the bags at Trader Joe’s, but you can get them online too.
Just for my nut free friends!
If you can’t have the cashews or almond butter, you can swap those out for sunflower seeds and sunbutter or tahini. I have made energy bites with both before, and they turn out great! In fact, the chocolate covered banana energy bites in my lunchbox cookbook, The Little Lunchbox Cookbook, are completely nut free, using sunflower seeds since many schools are nut free school zones.
Ingredient sourcing
I’ll be the first one to tell you from experience that fun little real food snacks like energy bites can absolutely BLOW your budget. Listen to me…don’t do it. If you cannot source this stuff without going broke, pack the kids local fruit and a handful of nuts and call it good for their snack. I don’t want you going broke to make these. If the freeze dried fruit is expensive where you live, leave it out – they taste so good even without that fancy fun stuff! For what it is worth, I do get every single ingredient on the list, except the freeze dried blueberries, at Costco. I pick up the freeze dried fruit at Trader Joe’s. I know not everyone has these places to choose from. In fact Trader Joe’s was even a mythical dream for me up until a couple years ago when they finally built one here!
Blueberry Energy Bites
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups Nour dates pitted
- 1 cup cashews almonds or walnuts would work here too
- 2 ½ tbsp almond butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- 1/3 cup freeze dried blueberries
Instructions
- Put the dates, cashews, almond butter, vanilla extract, and sea salt in your food processor, and pulse the blender a few times. Then, continuously blend the mixture for about 1 minute until everything is incorporated, and the mixture can pinch together and stick together.
- Add the freeze dried blueberries, and pulse until the blueberries are incorporated into the mixture in tiny bits.
- Use a tablespoon or a spoon to scoop the mixture, packing it into the measuring spoon. Use your hands to roll the energy bite into a round ball. Continue with the rest of the energy bite mixture. This recipe makes about 18 tablespoon sized energy bites.
Notes
- These energy bites keep in the pantry for a month, or in the fridge or freezer for 3 months.
- If you are nut free, I have used sunbutter and sunflower seeds for energy bites before with great success! you will use less sunflower seeds, so play around with the amount – it will probably be more like 3/4 cup or a little less.
- You can use medjool dates if that is what you have. Just pit and halve them to measure.
- You can swap the freeze dried blueberries for any freeze dried fruit!
- This recipe doubles well if you have a large enough food processor, like my 14-cup food processor.
