Nut Ball Recipe

~ Laura Hoy

During refreshment breaks at my aromatherapy events, I like to serve fresh mint tea and fragrant snacks made with scented botanical ingredients. Here’s a simple ‘nut ball’ recipe flavoured with my orange essential oil, but check out the tips below for bringing different flavours to them:

Nut Ball Recipe:

Ingredients:

Instructions:

  • Roast almonds in oven for 15/20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. Allow to cool.
  • Blend roasted almonds.
  • Remove them from blender and blend the sliced dates with any pits removed.
  • Add nuts to dates and blend until mixture starts to form.
  • Mix the drops of orange essential oil with the olive oil and add to the blender, blend a little more. Note you could try flavouring with other essential oils such as mandarin, peppermint or even geranium!
  • Place in bowl and knead with hands forming into a ball.
  • Roll into small balls and then roll in the chopped hazelnuts.

Variations & Tips:

  • Instead of using orange essential oil, you can use the zest of an unwaxed orange – it’s actually the same thing, as the essential oil from an orange is held in the peel,
  • try the zest of other citrus fruits such as grapefruit & lime.
  • Use a mix of different nuts instead of just of almonds, such as hazel, brasil & pecans.
  • I like using 200g almonds & 200g hazelnuts, but try to shake off as much of the skin on the hazels after roasting.
  • Add a spoon full of tahini, this is helpful if the mixture is a bit dry and the tahini works well if using rose or geranium to give a Persian flavour to the balls.
  • Try using soft dried apricots instead of, or as well as dates, just keep the ratio of nuts to dried fruit similar to get the correct consistency.
  • decorate the nut balls with chopped nuts, zest of citrus, dried fruit powders… bring your own style!
  • other ingredients you could experiment with are seeds as well as nuts or instead of, vanilla powder if you can afford it!

Click here to check out the Fruity Nut Ball Recipe.

 

Leave a comment