Carrot cake in a little healthy bite? Sign me up! I’ve been a die hard carrot cake fan since I was a kid. I remember going to Granville Island Market in Vancouver, and there was this one particular bakery that made these amazing carrot cake muffins smothered in cream cheese. Since then I’ve been hooked, and its always my birthday cake request.
Funny enough, my husband doesn’t share my same love of carrot cake, so these carrot cake protein balls will be for me, and the girls. Clara, my 3 year old was very interested in helping me make these. She helped roll the balls (hence why some of them are a little rustic 😉 and was eating the dough off the wooden spoon!
To make them the most carrot cake-like, I used traditional spices and of course, shredded carrots. I recommend using the finer shredding option on your grater so you don’t have large carrot chunks, but its totally up to you.
I’ve recently started using a new protein powder line and its been working awesome. Its a Canadian brand (sorry US friends, its not available there yet) called Perfect Sports, and their whey protein isolate called Diesel is 100% New Zealand whey and has a much higher amount of protein per scoop than others I’ve used. This bumps the protein content to 5 grams in each of these balls, whereas with other brands of protein it may only be 3 to 4 grams per ball. Using a high quality protein can really make a difference! Diesel has 27 grams of protein per 1 scoop (30 grams) and some are only 20 grams of protein per 1 scoop, so have a peek at the label of the one you’re using.
I also dunked these in some melted yogurt chips to give them a frosting, but this is totally optional. I thought it made them even prettier and also gave it that cream cheese frosting taste. I was also short on dark raisins, so I used half dark raisins and half golden raisins. You could totally also use chopped dates too if you aren’t a raisin fan.
Around Easter time or not, I think you’ll absolutely love them.
- ½ cup nut butter (I used natural peanut butter)
- 1 cup quick oats
- ⅓ cup raisins
- ¾ cup whey protein, vanilla (I used Diesel New Zealand Whey Isolate)
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp nutmeg
- ¼ tsp cloves
- ½ cup finely shredded carrots (remember to peel them beforehand)
- 2 Tbsp sugar-free honey or additional sweetener *optional
- 2 Tbsp of milk
- ¼ cup yogurt chips
- 1 tsp coconut oil
- In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients (oats, whey protein, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves) Then mix in the raisins and carrots.
- Add in the peanut butter, honey and mix until it starts to come together. Add in the milk to make the dough a good consistency to roll into balls.
- Roll into balls and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Chill in the fridge and store in fridge or freezer in a sealed container.
- For the frosting, in a small bowl add in the yogurt chips and coconut oil, microwave in 30 second increments stirring after each 30 seconds until melted.