Chocolate Snowball Cookies

These grain and gluten free chocolate snowball cookies are made with the leftover pulp from making nut milk, dates, and cocoa, then rolled in coconut. Sugar free and vegan, with lots of warm spices, these are a great holiday food gift.

I make a lot of cashew milk at home. I don’t have an ultra fancy blender, so that means that every time I make milk, I end up with a pretty good amount of cashew pulp. If you have a vitamix or an equivalent blender, you don’t end up with the leftover goodies. It’s essentially the same thing as almond pulp, which can be substituted in this recipe.

Because I have this leftover nut stuff coming out my ears, I’ve developed a few recipes for using it up. This has become a fast favourite. Graham loves these little cookies and I usually make a batch a week. Even my friend Ashley, whose hands you’ve seen before, likes these. She hates chocolate (so weird).

The original plan, several months ago, was to make a bliss ball kind of treat out of the leftover cashews. More like these than these. When the dough came together, though, it seemed like a cookie dough more than a protein ball. Into the oven! What came out was a pretty frickin good cookie. A cookie that’s sugar free, grain free, and vegan to boot. If you’ve ever had chocolate timbits (hey there fellow Canadians!) they’re reminiscent of those little donuts in texture. It’s almost cake-y.

After a bunch of trials, I decided that these are winter cookies, and they should taste and look that way. I tried a vegan white chocolate dip, but it was no good. Rolling them in coconut makes them extra cute and tasty, and then you don’t have to worry about making chocolate from scratch for a very simple, quick cookie.

I’ve been able to cut down the ingredient list significantly after a whole bunch of trials, but still prefer the different spice combination in this recipe. You can use just cinnamon if you’d like, or even leave the spices out altogether. If you can, please try them with all the spices. It’s good. Winter is the time for warm spices.

You can also make these with regular nut meal instead of pulp, and I’ve included directions for that below. These are dead simple, and everyone who’s tried them has liked them.

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