No Bake Power Balls using ingredients from ALDI

Gather your little helpers because this recipe is perfect to make with kiddos. Its also super budget friendly since I use ingredients that you can find at your local ALDI. We make this recipe almost weekly and we almost always make it as a double batch. My kids love it as a snack or they eat a couple for a quick easy breakfast. My husband also loves them as an after work snack when desperately foraging for any type of food that doesn’t need to be “made”. And, I love them because the combination of peanut butter and chocolate is my absolute fav. and the dried cranberries give a nice jolt of sour/sweet freshness that curbs my appetite. 

Ingredients: 

• 1 c Rolled Oats
• ½ c Mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
• ½ c Milled Flax Seeds
• ½ c peanut butter (¼ c regular, ¼ c unsweetened organic peanut butter)
• ⅓ c light blue agave syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (or almond)
• 1 Tbls chia seeds
• ½ c Dried Cranberries

Directions:

Put all the dry ingredients together and mix. I like to mix the dry ingredients first because this is something easy that my “helpers” can do. It gets a lot harder to mix when the peanut butter is added so I take over the mixing after we add the peanut butter, agave, and vanilla (or almond) extract. Also, it is essential that you have your random hot dog bun (also from ALDI) and glue stick ready at all times. 

Once you have mixed everything together, cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator for about 30 min.    

After the mixture has chilled, form the mixture into balls using your hands or a measuring spoon. We like to use a teaspoon because making smaller bites makes it feel like we are getting more snacks. The trickery.

 About half way through this process, you’ll need to stop to put your 3 year old in time-out for squirting his sisters with a grape juice box. Once you are done disciplining your “helper”, form the other half of the mixture into balls. You may need to re-chill your mixture if it starts sticking to your hands too bad. 

There you have it!  A quick yummy snack or breakfast that the whole family will enjoy :)

Side Notes:

• In this recipe we use half regular peanut butter and half organic unsweetened peanut butter because the agave is super sweet and makes the recipe sweet enough without the added sugar from the peanut butter. It will still taste good if you use all regular peanut butter. 
• These are irresistible to me when we use almond extract (yum, yum, super yum)