Fitness Fridays: Protein Balls

Morning lovelies!

It's a horrible dreary grey and rainy day as I type this and I don't know about you but it always makes me want to eat.
I'm really having to curb the snacking on my week off as being at home means I can eat whenever which is different to working in a lab where no food and drink is allowed!

I've been wanting to try some recipes for a while and took the opportunity to try this one, which i think was from Pinterest. It's not really a recipe as such as there weren't any amounts, but it was fun to do all the same.

You need 2 bananas and a whole pile of oats for this. I underestimated the amount of oats needed so basically just bring the bag/container that you keep them in!

You will need to peel and then mash up the bananas in a bowl first, this looks a lot like baby food and I felt like I'd fast forwarded my life by 5/10 years, lets not go there yet eh?!

After this you add the oats until the mixture can be formed into balls. I've no idea how much I needed in the end as I kept needing to add more, the bananas are quite moist fruits aren't they!

At this point, because I knew i wanted to try multiple flavours I separated the mixture into another bowl so I could add some chocolate protein powder to one half.

This resulted in the above photo. Having added chocolate protein powder to one bowl (about 1.5 scoops) and a few spoons of peanut butter to the other half, I then added oats until the mixture would stay when I scooped some into a ball.

These need to go into the oven at 350 degrees for 10/15 mins, so they need to be firm enough to stay in a shape but not too firm so that they dry out. This was my big mistake with the chocolate ones!

I kept adding oats until I thought the consistency was correct but must have added too many, they formed perfect ball shapes to go into the oven but took 5 minutes to go hard and now a day later taste very powdery and you need a large quantity of water to rehydrate yourself! They still taste nice though...

I was quite proud that even I managed to conquer the '2 spoon' technique in getting them to be as round as possible. Some are quite squashed and weird looking but let's just let that go.

The chocolate ones came out looking as above and whilst still warm they were chocolate, gooey and warming, which is a far cry from what they're like now but there we go. Notes for next time; oats slowly increase in size and therefore you don't actually need as many. Don't rush!

The peanut ones are on the right below, they took a lot longer in the over (~20mins) and taste considerably better. I think this is highly likely to do with me not adding as many oats and the butter being a different consistency to the powder. They're definitely the tasty brothers of this particular batch and as a result have been eaten already (most of them whilst warm...who am I to miss out on warm peanutty goodness!)

These were super quick and a lot of fun to make. I feel like I've actually baked cakes and yet all I did was mash fruit and roll it into a ball shape.

There's so many flavours you can try with this, as well as nut butters and the gorgeous chocolate spread, you could add any flavour protein for a hit after the gym, dessicated coconut and fruit and nut or chocolate chips for a treat. I would definitely make these again, I'd be interested to see how long the shelf life is and they lasted 2 days in my house before they were all eaten.

It would be handy if I could make them on weekends for the week and save myself buying bars but I've no idea if this will happen as on Sunday's I'm normally hungover in bed or slogging it out running round a park! Extreme!

What do you think of this super easy recipe? Will you be trying them out?

There's so many flavour options...what would you choose?

If you ran out of original Valentines ideas and your other half is a gym addict, you can always whip these up last minute for a surprise, I'm sure it will make them smile. I mean what gym addict wouldn't want protein filled chocolate balls on their Friday night?!

L xxx