Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Energy Balls

These healthy cookie dough bites taste just like chocolate chip cookie dough. You might never guess these are also healthy, made from real ingredients and no refined sugar or flour. They’re especially great for an afternoon pick me up, entertaining and summer BBQs.

If you like chocolate chip cookies (who doesn’t??) then you will love these no bake cookie dough balls. They’re a healthier sweet treat made with nourishing ingredients, to satisfy your sweet craving. They’d make a fun snack or dessert for kids, pool parties, brunch, BBQs,

Is Butter Healthy?

Butter can be confusing when you want to eat healthier. It’s delicious, but you might think it’s bad for you. Butter can be inflammatory, and unhealthy, for similar reasons that experts often tell people to avoid red meat. But this advice often misses the quality aspect, which is so important. Not all animal fats are bad. Factory raised or industrial cows, whether for dairy or meat consumption, are fed mostly grains (GMO grains) and don’t get much, if any, time outdoors. The fat from these animals is traditionally higher in omega 6 fatty acids. Omega 6 isn’t unhealthy, but the typical American diet consumes way too much compared to omega 3s.

On the flip side, pasture raised or grass fed cows, that are raised more humanely on pastures and spend their time outdoors grazing on grass (their natural diet). This boost omega 3s in these animal fats.

If you’re concerned about saturated fat and cholesterol in butter, context is important. Butter is just one form of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet. If you eat a lot of these fats, then you’d want to be more mindful with butter. Cholesterol is important for the body to make hormones and other processes, and studies have been inconsistent in relating it to heart disease risk or recommending exactly how much to eat.

Butter can fit into a healthy and anti inflammatory diet when it’s higher quality from grass fed or pasture raised cows and when you eat a variety of fats, natural plant fats like nuts, avocados and olive oil. In this recipe, I use just a little butter, and balance it with raw cashews. This way, you get the flavor of butter but the added healthy benefit of plant based cashew fats.

How do you make brown butter?

Making brown butter is so easy. You just melt butter in a pan or pot with a lighter color bottom (so you can see when the butter turns brown), heated to low/medium heat. Let the butter simmer until you can smell it (smells a bit like caramel) and it looks light to medium brown. It takes about 3-5 minutes. I use brown butter in this recipe to give these no bake cookies a bit of baked cookie flavor.

Recipe ‘Brown Butter Chocolate Chip No Bake Cookies’

Yields 12 balls

Prep and cook time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup soaked raw cashews (soaked for about 10-15 minutes)

• 1 tbsp cooled brown butter

• 2-3 tsp raw (or natural) honey (depending on how sweet you prefer/how sweet your chocolate is)

• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

• 1/8 tsp fine sea salt

• 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp oat flour (if you want them firmer, you can add 3 tbsp)

• 2 squares of chocolate of choice. I use 70% dark chocolate

Directions

1. Add drained, soaked raw cashews to a food processor and blend until it forms a paste. Scrape sides as needed. This takes 2ish minutes.

2. Add the brown butter, vanilla extract, honey and salt and blend until fully mixed.

3. Add the oat flour, pulse to mix at first then blend until it clumps together.

4. Break up the chocolate into the mixture and pulse it until mixed in.

5. Measure out 1 tsp of mixture per ball and roll. Place on parchment and allow to set for an hour or so.