Powerball Cookies: A Make Ahead Snack
I have been making these Powerball Cookies for years now. I love to double batch them and stick a bunch in the freezer.
I have no doubt that you’ll love this delicious, easy to make, relatively healthy cookie. Seriously, these little orbs deliver on that promise. My kids enjoy helping me make these every few weeks or so (and sneaking a few chocolate chips on the sly). Then, we freeze most of them, so we don’t gorge ourselves silly. Uh, did I mention they are good? From frozen, just nuke them for 20 seconds when ready to eat. Enjoy!
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Powerball Cookies are a healthy, real-food snack. Careful, it’s hard to stop at just one!
Ingredients
- 1 cup peanut butter or almond butter
- 1 cup honey (I often cut this back to 3/4 cup and make up the 1/4 cup with more nut butter)
- 3 cups old-fashioned oats (quick-cooking works fine)
- 1/2 cup ground flax seed or wheat germ Why eat flaxseed?
- 1 cup dark chocolate chips
- 1 cup any combination of nuts and soft dried fruits (I used 1/2 chopped pecans and 1/2 raisins)
Instructions
- Blend peanut butter and honey until smooth. You may want to warm them first to make this step easier.
- Mix in oats and flaxseed or wheat germ.
- Add chocolate chips and dried fruit and/or nuts. Stir until well combined.
- Shape into balls (using wet hands or wet cookie scoop is easiest) and refrigerate or freeze.
Notes
Freezer Meal Instructions:
To Freeze:
Shape in to balls and place on a cookie sheet lined with waxed or parchment paper. Flash freeze for a few hours so the cookies don’t stick to one another. Then put in to a freezer bag or airtight container for up to 3 months.
To Prepare:
Warm cookies in the microwave for 15-20 seconds or eat frozen.
Yummy! Made these today and they were great. The flax seed will take some getting use to but the rest was great. Did dried cherries and pistachios.
Sounds delicious!
These are so good, I feel like I’d never have to make chocolate chip cookies again. I agree that you could cut back the honey and replace it with peanut butter (I’ll do that next time). We don’t love dried fruit in this house so I just used all pecans for the nut/fruit portion. So good.
★★★★★
Really glad to hear you liked them, Alicia. Thanks for the comment and review!
In the instructions it says to “flash freeze”, how do you do this? I am excited to make these!
Good question! Flash freeze just means to place the cookies on a rimmed baking sheet or in a shallow dish in the freezer. Make sure they aren’t touching. Once they are frozen, you can throw them in a freezer bag and pull out however many you want at a time. Hope that helps!
Incredible recipe! I’ve recommended to several friends. I always freeze them but they never last very long in our house anyway.
★★★★★
Thanks, Shauna. I have to throw these in the freezer so they are out of sight, because they never last long around here either. 🙂
Thank you so much for this recipe. I surprised my family with them tonight and they are a big hit! These are also going to be great little energy bites as I move into my third trimester. Thank you! Happy New Year!
★★★★★
Sweet! So glad these will be helpful to your growing family. Congrats!
their in the fridge right now but once they come I am gonna pop pop pop them into my mouth
OMG these cookies were like the best thing that ever happened to me like wow I am soooooooooo telling everybody about ur sooooooooo totally awesome recipe!!!!!! Yeah man GO POWERBALLS
Hi Rachel,
Just curious as to whether you’ve had any luck with baking these as opposed to nuking them. Love the simplicity of it, though, and can’t wait to make them this weekend!
Tracy, I’ve never tried to bake them. You’ll have to let me know if you try. I don’t think they’d make it to the oven b/c we eat them before then. 🙂
Hi, Rachel!
I made something similar with my kindergarten class when I was in kindergarten many, many moons ago. We were doing an activity in Girl Scouts a few years ago, so I did my best to remember what we put in it and made a very similar recipe to this (without the chocolate chips) and added a little powdered milk to the recipe. We called them “squirrel food.” They enjoyed them very much. These definitely have a lot of energy and are so much fun to make with (or for) children, just not too late at night or they’ll never get to sleep. 😉
Squirrel Food…love it!
My three-year-old daughter and I are making these when she wakes up as a reward for her taking a good nap. I think she and my husband will love them! Um, and if she doesn’t I’m okay with eating a few now and then from my freezer. 😉
Nice, Natalie! I’ve been known to use them as a reward, too. 🙂 Enjoy!
Oh, I'm so glad you tried these! My boys really do love them and they inhale them. They last in the fridge for several days, too, fyi! 🙂
Hi Jena,
I feed them to Hannah (15 months and has only her front teeth) and she does fine. You might take out the dried fruit from the toddler bites.
Also, I may try making them with Agave nectar instead of honey next time to cut back on the amount of sugar for my kids. Just an idea.
Thanks for reading!
These look great Rachel. Would you say they're soft enough for younger toddlers?
Thanks! Really enjoy the blog too!
Jena
Thanks for reading, Ashley. I think I've seen your comments on Every Square Inch before?? Way to take some steps towards healthy eating! Hope we can meet sometime.
Rachel – we haven't met, but I really enjoy reading your blog (and have for about a month). In fact, it may just motivate me to cook a bit more! We've been trying to eat more whole wheat, fruits and veggies while avoiding too much salt and sugar. Still having trouble converting wholly to the beautiful organic aisles of Hy-Vee and Clovers though. Thanks for writing!