Banana Whey & Walnut Protein Balls

With another recipe inspired by the @proteinpowdr Blog, namely the Whey Protein Bars at Bigger Stronger Faster entry. I started with the base ingredients, then went a slightly different route.The departure on ingredients was mainly due to the availability I had of nuts, a lack of chocolate and lots and lots of dessicated coconut at my disposal. I could quite easily have made this using Almonds, as I have a pretty large supply (and Almond Milk), but I thought I'd save them for another more banana packed recipe in the near future.

Whey Protein & Nut Balls

I only wanted to make a simple recipe today and this completely fell into the remit, with no cooking required whatsoever. Just mix up all the ingredients and you're done.. what could be easier? All you need to do is get all the dry ingredients mixed into a bowl and slowly, bit by bit, add the milk until you get a decent consistency that will allow you to form the mix into solid shapes, but still a little moist (you wouldn't want to eat it if it was completely dry, I'm sure). Rolling in coconut was my decision for a coating, but you could almost as easily add some melted dark chocolate as a luxurious shell.. I might do that next time, actually.. it does sound pretty good.. 

I had fancied making some Protein Pancakes this morning, but was out of eggs, so went this route instead.. Eggs now available again, so perhaps tomorrow for that.. though I am also thinking about making a Banana Pizza - seriously! There is loads of evidence of Banana Pizzas around the Internet & if I can get the base right, then we could be onto a winner there - I had seen a Banana Pizza whilst on holiday in Iceland earlier in the year, but it used a strong smelly cheese that turned me off it - shame.

Ingredients

• 1 cup oats (Ground is best, but you can use a food processor to grind normal oats to a powder)
• 1 cup of Banana Whey Protein Powder
• 8 tbsp Coconut Flour
• 100ml Kara Coconut Milk
• 150ml Alpro Hazlenut Drink
• 50g (roughly) of Walnut Halves (would have used Hazlenuts, but none left :))
• Dessicated Coconut to decorate/cover

Method

• Put the oats in a food processor and blend until they resemble a powder (or just use Ground Oats)
• add the Banana Whey Powder (obviously you can choose any flavour)
• add the Coconut Flour
• Slowly add as much milk as you need to get the right consistency, with the blender still going round. In this case I found that 250ml worked pretty well for me. You may find that you need to stop from time to time to free up some of the sticky mix to get it to mix better, but it also gives you a chance to assess if you need to add more milk, or not
• Add the nuts and blend a little longer, until the nuts are properly distributed through the mix
• roll small balls of mixture in your hands then cover in Dessicated Coconut as an outer layer. The original recipe called for a chocolate shell, but I wasn't feeling it today :) - you can shape it how you want to - today just felt like a 'balls' day :)
• Put onto a plate and refrigerate for an hour or so