carrot cake energy balls

Carrot cake energy balls, Tom Kerridge’s no-bake, no sugar, no nonsense bites made from goodness itself.

Who doesn’t like cakes made of cake? I’m talking about rocky road and its siblings, chocolate biscuit cake, Oreo truffles or peanut butter balls. The idea behind those sweets is appealing to anyone who, as a child, squished and scrunched their treat, plastering it all over their paws before putting it into their mouth and over surrounding areas. That’s just about everyone, apart from a few dour kids grown into dourer adults. The method of making those sweets appeals to anyone who ever stood in front of a store cupboard craving ‘something’ and undecided what to have. That’s probably everyone again apart from miserable self-discipline junkies. Making one of those concoctions is like sweeping out the content of the cupboard and mashing it together, with the help of copious amounts of melted chocolate/marshmallow/both. It’s like dipping your finger in the jar of Nutella or peanut butter. It’s like eating ice cream straight from the mega size tub. It’s like licking spoons and scraping out raw batter from mixing bowls. It’s disgustingly delicious.

Now the completely opposite idea of ‘disgustingly delicious’ is anything, usually bars, labelled raw, vegan, protein, or energy. Those things usually have ‘nutra’ or ‘charge’ in the name and in the list of ingredients there will invariably be chia, raw cocoa and palm oil. Apart from those, of course, there will be a multitude of stuff that belongs in the chemistry lab, like Polydextrose, Glycerol, and Xylitol. The bars have unpleasantly gunky texture, they smell and they taste quite revolting. Admittedly low carb, made from stuff that is supposed to give you an energy boost but all the same, virtuously disgusting.

And the best of both worlds are Tom Kerridge’s carrot cake balls, with ‘energy’ in the name but only natural ingredients; no added sugar but full of deliciously sweet things like dates and coconut. They have slightly chewy texture but there’s the nut crunch; and they don’t taste overbearingly raw even though the carrots and the oats they are made of are uncooked. They are a joy.

There is also the element of ‘sweeping out the cupboard’ as the nut content can be varied; you can add raisins or other dried fruit, and you can ad lib the spices. And if you fancy crushing a few digestive biscuits into the mix, to reinforce the ‘cake’ factor from the recipe name, who can blame you?