Healthy Living How To

Vanessa Rae Romero

Vegan Chocolate Protein Truffles

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It's no secret I am an advocate of nutrient dense foods, minimally processed and high quality. A healthy diet consists of foods like beef, poultry and eggs from pastured-fed animals, wild fish, organic fruits & vegetables, nuts & seeds and fats like butter, ghee and coconut oil. In my opinion, a healthy diet also eliminates sugar in all it's forms, vegetable oils, and most grains. Sounds simple enough, right? Until it's your birthday and you want a slice of cake or it's Christmas and you want a cookie, or it's Tuesday night and you want to eat chocolate while watching the Biggest Loser.

In Healthy Treats: Part One, we discussed the role of empty calories in our diet. While our government proposes these nutritionally devoid calories can be consumed in moderation, I am of the opinion, they should be eliminated as much as possible. Not just because of what they can do to our waistline, but because they are very damaging to our health and highly addicting. For many, myself included, the idea of never having a treat, would end in a binge on forbidden foods. What I have found to work, not only for myself, but also for the clients I have worked with, is to come up with healthy treats that replace their unhealthy counterparts that can be successfully integrated into one's nutrition plan.

Vegan Truffles Image

Today's recipe, Vegan Chocolate Protein Truffles, fits my healthy treat bill. Not only are these made with high quality plant-based ingredients, they actually deliver an antioxidant punch equal to over twenty servings of fruits and vegetables. You want to know my secret? I combined two of my favorite products, Thorne Research VegaLite with Nutri-Dyn Chocolate Dynamic Fruits & Greens.

VeganLite is a high-quality protein powder made with two plant-based protein sources; pea protein isolate and rice protein isolate. There are no artificial flavors, colors or sweeteners in VeganLite. It is soy-free, dairy-free and sweetened with stevia. This is the same powder I use  for our favorite  Protein Waffle recipe as well as my Vegan Protein Brownie. Dynamic Fruits & Greens is an amazing greens supplement, containing 15 certified organic foods, 70 trace minerals and 50 different freeze-dried super foods. Not only is it the most comprehensive phyto-nutrient product out there, it is the absolute best tasting greens drink you'll ever try. Believe, me, I have tried many greens products and most of them taste and smell like rabbit food.

Healthy Vegan Truffles Image 

Vegan Chocolate Protein Truffles

Printable Recipe

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Chill Time: 30 minutes
Makes: 12 (in my case it serves 1)

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a mixing bowl, mix together VeganMax, Dynamic Greens and Celtic sea salt.
  2. With a fork mix and mash in coconut milk, stevia, vanilla extract and almond butter.
  3. Finally mix and mash in the water.
  4. Using your hands form into a large ball of dough and then roll into 12 even sized balls.
  5. Place cocoa powder on a plate and roll each truffle in the powder.
  6. Refrigerate truffles for 30 minutes and enjoy with a dollop of dairy-free whipped cream.

Recipe Notes

When you start mixing the wet with the dry, what forms are crumbles. This is good. You want the mixture to be very crumbly, the smaller the crumbles the better. If you have one, a pastry cutter works well for this. Once your get your hands in the bowl and start working it, what forms is a big dough ball.  It's fine to use a different brand of protein and greens, just be sure you like the taste of them. If they make an awful tasting shake chances are they'll make awful tasting truffles. However, I do not suggest subbing with whey protein isolate or concentrate in this recipe. Vegan protein powders tend to be more chalky and absorbent than whey. They require twice the amount of fluid when making a protein shake to make it palatable.