Go eat Dirt Balls! Only 100 calories a pop.

When I was a little girl I would play in the sand box for hours on end. I would create mud pies, mud cakes--6 course mud meals even! Sadly, no one would eat them for me but that did not stop my creations!

In our book , Squeaky Gourmet, we have a recipe called "Dirt Balls" which pulls on the little girl heart strings--reminding me of the sand box and all those hours wasted on mud food when I could have been making dirt balls that everyone would eat. (This recipe was recently mentioned on the NPR show on KAXE--listen here to the interview) So I enlisted the help of my own little girls to help me make Dirt Balls as a wonderful gluten free snack for the kids (and adults who long for the days of mud pies!) These were devoured by all of the kids soon after we made them.


Dirt Balls
serves 14
1/4 cup toasted oatmeal(old fashioned)
2 tbls sunflower seeds
1/2 cup natural peanut butter
2 tbls unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chopped fine
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbls roasted almonds chopped fine
1 pack stevia or 3 tbls raw honey


Toast the oatmeal in a non-stick skillet set on medium heat until they are browned. This was a great job for my 6 year old to work on since it is not highly explosive or flammable or anything and she felt like a big girl using the stove with me.


Setting the almonds aside; use your kitchen mixer add the remaining ingredients and blend well. We used raw honey in our mix because we have some allergy sufferers in the family and raw local honey helps build your own immunity to allergy triggers--but it has to be local honey to get the benefit. Once the oats are toasted to your liking you can add them to your coffee grinder or food processor to chop them up a bit before adding to the mud like mixture on the mixing bowl.


Make small balls about 3/4 in diameter , roll in your hands and then roll in the almonds. Now, this is where the fun came in for my 5 year old daughter as she was enlisted to create the dirt balls from the mud/mortar like substance we had created. Of course she did not want to roll them in the almonds, she preferred sprinkling the almonds on so they lost a bit of the rock effect.



Other Good Ideas:
--Add in dried cherries, coconut, puffed rice, crushed bran flakes,powdered milk or even protein powder
--roll in cocoa powder or cinnamon
--use different nut butters


Calories Per Serving: 92
Fat: 7 grams
Protein: 3 grams
Carbohydrates: 7 grams






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