Visions of Sugar Plums...

For about 2 years, I've been trying to work a recipe I made up, trying to guess ratios and ingredients.  I was thinking it could take the place of a sugar treat, I could do this as a snack or dessert. It wouldn't be low calorie but it would be healthier for me (sugar and chocolate, sadly, make me swell up, triggers my IBS).

So I was thinking of grinding up nuts, (I have a lot of almonds) with raisins and maybe some orange blossom honey (my favorite honey flavor) in the Cuisinart.  Would it hold together?  Would I need eggs and have bake them to make them hold together?

After 2 years of not wanting to waste ingredients, I decided to look online by ingredients.  Someone must have thought of this already, right?

Sigh.

Yeah.  They're called sugarplums.  Ever heard of those before?  Yeah.  Sugarplums.

almonds and raisins

 So basically, I've had freakin' visions of sugarplums dancing in my head for 2 years.  Seriously.

Recipe 1

Recipe 2

So basically it's:

1 cups of nuts (half a cup of walnuts, half a cup of pecans or 1 cup of almonds)

2 cups dried fruit.  Break it up any way you want. All raisins?  Half dates and half coconut?  Apricots?  Whatever.

3 tablespoons honey

pinch of cardamom

pinch of allspice

1/4 tsp cinnamon

2 tsp Grand Marnier (or use brandy and add grated orange peel to the mix or just go with brandy.  Or rum.  Whatever) to stick it all together into a ball.  

I did add candied ginger to the first batch (because I had some that I made a while ago) but I can't taste it at all so I didn't bother in the second.  Besides, candied ginger means cooked in a sugar syrup until dried, so no great loss.   

pecan, walnut, coconut, and dates

These are better than I anticipated!  So delicious!  So easy!  I can make these all the time, all year, not just for Christmas.  These are very rich so you don't have to eat a lot to be satiated.   

I didn't roll these in anything but I could use shredded coconut maybe roll them lightly in dark chocolate powder. I think sugar would ruin the whole thing for me.  Sure, they would look sparkly but they would also not be healthy for me and the whole point was for me to have a snack.  You could roll yours in colored sugars if you want a more festive look.