Healthy White Chocolate Sunflower Sesame Quinoa Energy Bites

Today, I am so excited to bring you all a guest blog post written by my friend Jess, the author of Desserts With Benefits. If you haven’t heard of her website, 1) you must be living under a rock, and 2) you are now in for a world of excitement. Jess is a culinary genius when it comes to healthy sweets. Her blog is FILLED with decadent recipes that will make your heart flutter and your body happy because they fit in with your healthy lifestyle. I’m embarrassed to say just how many recipes i’ve made from her website, and proud to say that NONE have fallen short of my expectations. Without further ado, I bring you Jess’s incredible creation, White Chocolate Sunflower Sesame Quinoa Energy Bites.  

Healthy White Chocolate Sunflower Sesame Quinoa Energy Bites — rich, flavorful, delicious and super easy to make…  no baking required!  Plus, it’s refined sugar free, gluten free, dairy free and vegan too  😀

I made this recipe while I had one week left on my apartment lease.  I still had a ton of food that I needed to use up before my move-out date, so I made these energy bites to use up some of the ingredients I had on hand.

I’m not a huge fan of sunflower seed butter or tahini.  I bought them to try them out, buuutttt peanut butter is still my #1 fave.  Hence, I had these two seed butters sitting in my fridge basically untouched.

These energy bites are kinda weird, I’ll admit that.  But somehow, they’re completely addicting at the same time.  I wasn’t planning on sharing this recipe, but I thought, why not?  Someone out there might prefer sunflower seed butter or tahini over peanut butter, or maybe they have an allergy to PB.  These bites DID strangely taste a bit like peanut butter, which is great!

So, what were the ingredients I had to use up?

-Quinoa Flakes
-Sunflower Seed Butter
-Tahini
-Raw Cacao Butter
-Honey

Turns out, all those ingredients came together to make a pretty damn tasty recipe  😀

It kinda tasted like white chocolate from the cacao butter.

It’s perfectly sweet and has the perfect firmness level.  It’s not fudgy out of the fridge, it gets fudgier as it gets closer to room temperature.  It’s kinda like an oat-less, not crumbly granola bar.

These energy bites are a little hard to describe, but I can assure you that this was a delicious snack to have on hand during the end of my lease!

Healthy White Chocolate Sunflower Sesame Quinoa Energy Bites
(no bake, refined sugar free, gluten free, vegan)
Yields:  64 energy bites

• 256g (1 cup) Sunflower Seed Butter
• 256g (1 cup) Tahini
• 252g (3/4 cup) Honey
• 168g (6oz) Raw Cacao Butter, melted
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 1/2 tsp Stevia Extract
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 408g (4 cups) Quinoa Flakes

1. Line an 8×8″ brownie pan with parchment paper both ways.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the sunflower seed butter, tahini, honey and melted cacao butter.
3. Stir in the vanilla extract, stevia extract and salt.
4. Fold in the quinoa flakes 1 cup at a time.
5. Scoop the mixture into the prepared brownie pan and spread it out.  Place a sheet of parchment paper on top and press on it to flatten the mixture.  Place something flat and lightweight on top of the parchment paper to keep it in place (I used 2 chocolate bars).  Refrigerate overnight.
6. Slice into bite-sized pieces (I sliced mine into 64 bites).

Notes:  This recipe is:  no bake, refined sugar free, gluten free, dairy free and vegan!