Peanut Butter Chocolate Road Trip Balls

I am eating one right now, which is bad. Why? All the delicious Peanut Butter Chocolate Road Trip Balls are supposed to be for my vacation that starts in a few hours. Actually, it will be over by the time you read this, boo!

Summer Vacations truly are the BEST. I mean, Spring Break is supreme in the fact that you get to leave the frigid north (if you live up north) and bask in the sun, but really nothing beats summer. A summer road trip is kind of a new thing for me. Growing up I lived in five states (Minnesota, Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Illinois), none of which were where my extended family lived. So, our summer road trips were always to the Upper Midwest. Now, I love the Upper Midwest so much that I decided to go to college there, marry a man who will never leave and raise my little family there. However, coming here every single summer as a kid is not quite the same as a typical family summer road trip.

Now that I live by most of my amazing family I get the privilege of going on a few summer road trip vacations to cool new places!! Yeah! This year my husband and our two daughters are going to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We are headed there with my husband's parents and his sister. Wahoo! After I get back I plan to do one or maybe two posts about the trip so you can hear about the place, but for now I am going to tell you about the delicious snacks I made for the ride through Iowa and Nebraska.

I call these Peanut Butter Chocolate Road Trip Balls. They were inspired by a search on Pinterest that lead to these Chocolate Peanut Butter Energy Balls from Carrie This Home, but I changed a few things in the recipe and doubled it because the original recipe made only a few energy balls. Feel free to make either recipe, as I deserve no credit for the yummy idea!

What I love about these is that they taste like a delicious candy bar, but I think they may actually be healthy (ish). They have oatmeal, peanut butter, honey and flax seed, which I hear is all the rage in the health food world. In any case, they are yummy and SO easy to make. If you want to serve them for dessert, just add some chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. Also, I ate them with a banana, because I was feeling really healthy.

I took some pictures of them, but in all honesty I found it hard to portray their amazing taste through photos, so just make them even if they are not pretty.

"And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God's power." 

- 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (NIV)

PEANUT BUTTER CHOCOLATE ROAD TRIP BALLS

Prep time: 10 minutes
Yield: Makes 10-15 balls
Ingredients

• 2 cups oatmeal
• 1 cup flaxseed
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 4 tbsp. cocoa powder
• 2 tsp. sugar

Cooking Directions

1. Combine all ingredients into a large mixing bowl
2. Stir together and then use a knife to cut through the peanut butter
3. Continue to stir until all ingredients are even throughout mixture
4. Roll into 1 inch balls and store in road trip appropriate container
5. Place container in freezer until road trip begins
6. Keep road trip balls in car cooler or eat before they melt on road trip

Note: If you need to eat a low fiber diet, be careful with this recipe. These snacks contain a lot of fiber.