‘Caramel Delites’ No Bake Coconut Chocolate Balls

These no bake coconut date balls are inspired by my favorite Girl Scout Cookie, the Caramel Delites (previously Samoas). This healthy sweet snack recipe tastes so reminiscent of the original, without the sugar or processed ingredients.

 
 

No bake energy bites are my kind of ‘baking’. They have only whole and unrefined ingredients, require little effort or time and are made with nourishing ingredients, so they’re not an empty calorie snack. This isn’t exactly a copycat recipe for Samoa cookies, but a healthy take on the original.

This healthy Samoas inspired bliss ball recipe is balanced and nourishing, to satisfy the craving for the original for the health conscious!

Are Girl Scout Cookies Healthy?

They may be delicious, but no, Girl Scout cookies are not healthy. Caramel Delites/Samoas specifically are made with a number of inflammatory and ultra processed ingredients, including:

  • Sugar (being the first ingredient)

  • Enriched flour (aka white flour)

  • Hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils (soybean oil, palm oil)

  • High fructose corn syrup

  • Preservatives

  • Artificial flavors

Aside from all of that, Girl Scout cookies, and specifically Caramel Delites, are unbalanced with mostly simple carbohydrates in the form of sugar and white flour. This means that after eating them, you could expect a quick boost in blood sugar, which results in a blood sugar crash not long after.

Ingredients in This Date Balls Recipe

Raw Cashews

Raw cashews are easy to blend in the food processor to make homemade cashew butter. It just takes a few minutes, stopping every 30 seconds or so to scrape the sides and bottom corner, before it becomes creamier. It might not look completely smooth like you’d buy in the store, but you can tell it’s done when it’s smoother and starts to clump. Raw cashews are the perfect neutral base to a cookie-dough-like bliss ball.

Dates

Dates are a lower glycemic sweet due to its fiber and fructose content. This means it doesn’t raise blood sugar like regular sugar does. Fructose is still a sugar, so moderation is recommended. The body uses fructose from dates in a way that doesn’t have much of an effect on blood sugar. Dates naturally give these no-bake balls a caramel-y taste and chew.

Coconut (shredded and oil)

Coconut oil is a plant based type of saturated fat that offers many health promoting benefits. I use a small amount of unrefined coconut oil in the dough, along with shredded coconut, and then finish the bliss balls with toasted coconut.

Raw honey

Raw honey is another lower glycemic sweet ingredient due to its fructose content. Honey is also sweeter than sugar, so you can use less in recipes than you would sugar. Honey in its raw form offers some potent health benefits partly because of its antioxidants and phytonutrients.

Oat flour

Oat flour is part of the base in these oat balls. Oats are gluten free (read the label to ensure it’s completely free of gluten in the case of celiac’s disease), and made by grinding whole oats, so you get all of its fiber and plant based nutrients.

Recipe

Makes 14 balls

Ingredients

  • 1/2 raw cashews

  • 1 tsp unrefined, organic coconut oil (helpful when grinding whole cashews)

  • 7-8 Deglet dates, pitted

  • 2 tbsp shredded coconut (not toasted)

  • 1 tsp raw honey

  • 3/4-1 cup oat flour (can be made in blender from raw oats)

  • a pinch of sea salt (1/8 tsp)

  • 1 tsp vanilla

  • 3/4 cup toasted shredded coconut (I use unsweetened)

  • ~1/4 cup chocolate, melted (I mixed milk and dark chocolate)

 
 

Directions

  1. Toast shredded coconut in an oven heated to 325F, bake for 3-5 minutes until golden brown.

  2. In a food processor, blend raw cashews with 1 tsp coconut oil until smooth, it takes a few minutes. Stop the food processor to scrape the sides and bottom corner a few times until smooth.

  3. Add in the dates, vanilla, sea salt and honey and blend until smooth, another few minutes. (first photo)

  4. Add in the non-toasted shredded coconut and oat flour, a 1/4 cup at a time until absorbed. After adding 3/4 cup of oat flour, check the consistency of the dough. If it easily stays together in a ball, you can stop there. If it’s really soft you can sprinkle in a bit more oat flour at time. (second photo)

  5. Roll dough into 14 balls, about 2 tsp worth of dough each.

  6. Roll balls in toasted shredded coconut, pressing it in with your fingers

  7. Melt chocolate in a microwave, 20 seconds at time, and stirring between. Pour melted chocolate into a small pastry bag or plastic baggy and cut a very small corner off.

  8. Squeeze the chocolate out of the bag to drizzle over each ball. Sprinkle each with a bit more coconut.

  9. Allow the cookie dough balls to set for a few hours, they taste more flavorful after sitting a bit!

 
 
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