Raisin-Coconut Balls

not too pretty ~ these'll do just fine. ; )

Out of necessity, I've created a variation on the Date Balls with Toasted Coconut recipe. We are simultaneously packing to move to Sacramento, and packing for an extended-family vacation to Maui! We always travel with our own food, to avoid having to eat garbage while in flight. This usually consists of raw cheese, hard-cooked eggs, some hearty bread, and butter, and hopefully something sweet, like fruit or Coconut Dateballs. In an effort to simplify, I decided to skip making snacks for the trip and just buy some. So I stopped in at Cafe Gratitude, right up the street, to get a few of their yummy green energy balls. Sweetened with dried fruits, studded with nuts and seeds, and tinted with spirulina powder, Mommy and Anjali have enjoyed these occasionally as a treat. Well, they stopped carrying them!
So I quickly walked home and searched the cupboard to see what I could come up with in a hurry. Here's what it is:

Raisin Coconut Balls
3 handfuls of raisins
Maybe 10 leftover dried cranberries
1 cup coconut butter, softened by the sun
About 1/2 cup toasted coconut flakes, ground in coffee grinder
1/4 tsp seasalt
A generous sprinkling of sesame seeds
A handful of sunflower seeds
2 tbsp softened butter
1 tsp+ Vitamineral Green* powder

I mixed all ingredients in the food processor at once, scooped them out onto a cookie sheet using a teaspoon measure, and just shaped the blobs enough so that they won't fall apart when picked up. The cookie sheet went into the freezer, and I'll scoop some out into a container as we leave for the airport in the morning!
I have learned that, refreshingly, children do not exhibit that Puritanical determination I have cultivated to eat something "just because it's good for me," even if I don't like it. ; ) So I only added a bit of the green powder - enough to darken the mixture, and a small enough amount that, when tasting it, Anjali asked for more.
It is inspiring for me to have variations that work, as I rarely make something exactly the same twice.

* This is from a vegan company and website. Though I don't recommend a vegan diet, I think this is the best green powder around.