These no bake pumpkin sunflower butter bites are everything you crave in a quick, sweet, filling snack! They have just 5 ingredients and are super easy to make all in one bowl. They’re paleo with a vegan option and nut free, plus you can add raisins or dried cranberries depending on your mood.
I’m so excited to finally be sharing these tasty little bites, since I’ve been eating them pretty much every day for 2 weeks I think! Isn’t it awesome when you come across something that just works so well, tastes so good and is insanely easy to make?
Although these bites contain a good amount of pumpkin puree, the sunflower butter really wins here flavor wise, although the pumpkin contributes to a creamy dreamy texture that has a real smooth cookie dough quality to it.
They’re healthy and kid friendly, too. And by kid friendly I mean that kids will actually ask to have them as if they’re a junk food treat or a privilege. And, also, that they sort of remind me of play dough, although only by feel. Not flavor of course – these are SO much tastier than play doh. Even the fake cupcake play doh. Don’t tell me you’ve never tried it.
So, I’m in the process of looking back on old recipe posts and trying to either 1) take new, better pictures of them or 2) edit the so-so pictures to make them more presentable to do the recipe justice.
It’s sad when a really good recipe has an owner like me who couldn’t translate its dee-lish-ousness onto the screen. Plus, nobody pins food that looks like it’s already been eaten (unless it’s the perfect staged bite.) And, let’s be real – I want my food on Pinterest! I might be super slow and just realizing this, but I think I get it now.
Needless to say, this has been time consuming as heck. I’m basically in a cook, photograph, eat, edit mode lately, on top of everything else I need to do. When I set my mind on something I can be very impulsive and impatient, which is one reason I suck at photography to begin with.
I have a long ways to go to get where I want to be in this area (and every other area, but that’s like 5 other posts) but I’m happy that I’m taking steps to get there and taking my recipe creation more seriously. I used to throw things together, snap an iPhone picture and post about it.
Those were the days…when blogging was truly a hobby. Now, I want to feel good about people SEEING my blog and actually finding the food to appear appetizing.
Isn’t it interesting to look back on a blog and see your own growth, almost reliving it, with the knowledge of what comes next? It’s funny that while the parts of my life that feed the TOPICS of this blog – running and the paleo diet – have basically remained constant, I’ve watched many other things change as time has gone by.
Now don’t tell me that’s too heavy for a Pumpkin Sunflower Butter Bites recipe post! One of the beautiful parts of blogging (and writing in general) is how you never know when you’ll be hit with your own truth while writing a random post!
Pumpkin Sunflower Butter Bites {Paleo & Vegan}
No Bake Pumpkin Sunflower Butter Bites {Paleo & Vegan Option}
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup pumpkin puree canned or homemade
- 2/3 cup sunflower seed butter*
- 3 tbsp raw honey - use pure maple syrup for vegan*
- 1/4 cup + 3-4 tbsp coconut flour
- Pinch salt
- Chopped dried cranberries or raisins
Instructions
-
In a medium bowl, combine the pumpkin, sunflower seed butter and honey or maple syrup and mix well until very smooth
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Add 1/4 cup of the coconut flour and mix, once combined, add a tbsp more at a time, slowly, until you get the consistency of a dough thick enough to roll into balls - do not go over 1/2 cup coconut flour total (I used 1/4 cup + 3 tbsp.)
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Stir in the chopped raisins or cranberries, roll into small balls and refrigerate to let them firm up a bit.
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Enjoy! Store leftovers in the refrigerator for up to one week.
Recipe Notes
* You can use any smooth nut butter of your choice, or a combination, if sunflower butter isn't your thing 🙂
* If you use maple syrup instead of honey, you will likely need that extra tbsp of coconut flour, but add slowly to get the right consistency.
If you have a blog, how do you feel looking back at old posts?
What was your biggest “ah-ha!” moment in blogging?
Do you vote dried cranberries or raisins?
I look back at old posts and realize how much I really had to say! Holy cripes I would fit so much into each of those things. I really needed to get some of that out! I definitely wish I had better pictures of my food, but then again, I don’t have the best pictures now. Which is a problem because I have a bunch of food and recipe type posts coming up. GAR
Same with me – it was like an endless diary entry with not much structure! And bad photos, half were upside down, I think!
I shutter looking back at old posts. I’ve actually deleted quite a few because they were so bad & reshot them. I’m slowly working on it. It breaks my heart that so many good recipes have been victim to it. Would like to hear some of your Pinterest tips. I need to get my pins up. You know I’m not a fan.
I’ve started replacing pictures of good recipes with terrible photos, but I still have tons of really ugly photos that will stay, I think, until I get around to doing each one! Pinterest is overwhelming but I’m finally posting to some group boards now and getting started.
These look delicious, and I love that they’re vegan!
Yup, thanks! And if you don’t do honey, pure maple syrup will work well 🙂
ugh, i’m redoing a lot of pics too and recipes. but thats okay, more to eat! and these look perfect!
I’m glad I’m not the only one doing this! Except with me I’ll likely have to do them over again once my skills improve. Your photos constantly impress me!
YUM! I have to admit that I’m not a huge pumpkin lover ( like it but don’t love it) but I love anything with nut butter. Oh and old posts? I cringe sometimes. But I respect that that’s where I was in life/blogging. If I posted recipes I might want to change photos from the beginning though.
The pumpkin creates texture here but the sunflower butter definitely flavors them 🙂 And I haven’t edited any posts but I do hope to get around to redoing pictures, so I can actually feel proud of these recipes!
I’m loving these short ingredient lists! I am with you on this whole photography deal… I’m way too impatient I just want to go eat my food. I don’t think I have yet to have my big “ah ha” blogging moment, but I am learning so much in my short experience from my many mistakes and other bloggers! Even with blogging as a hobby, I want my content to be the best it can be for my readers, but I’m sure there is even more pressure that come with doing it full-time. Thanks for the recipe, I’ll let you know when I make it!
I’ve had too many ah-ha moments I think! It’s a lot of learning, especially since I didn’t read a lot of blogs before starting so it feels new. I hope you make this – definitely let me know!
First of all, these look delicious and I’ll be trying them. And second, I am at the exact same point in my blogging “career” – it’s still a for fun thing for me, but I am trying to redo my recipe photos because now I’d like them to actually look as appealing as I know they taste good, and my photos were pretty bad at the beginning last winter…
Glad I’m not alone. It’s a lot of work though! As if I have time to cook more than I already do, plus then do “photoshoots” but I’m hoping to get there little by little.
When I look back at some of my old posts I shudder. It’s really quite scary. But it’s also kind of cool to see how much I’ve grown over the past (almost) 4 years. I really should try to go back and redo some of the food photos…But first I need to make these. YUM!
It’s a bit overwhelming to redo all the old photos! I might never get there, I’m starting with my favorite recipes and working down the list 🙂
These are my kind of bites! Yum!
They are good ones, and so easy!
Just a note to say I love your ramblings and enjoy that when you post a recipe it’s not JUST the recipe, it’s also a blog post. Insight into others’ ways of thinking that mirrors my own mania is always comforting 🙂 Thanks!
Thanks Amanda! Love that you get my thinking, makes me feel good too!
You know, I kinda like reading my old stuff. I’d write for the pure intrinsic joy of it, get zero comments and still feel so satisfied. I love that. Some of my old stuff is so hilarious that it’s actually sad that nobody has read it! Then again, it’s probably just me who thinks it’s funny. Ha ha ha. I’m such a dork. Anyway, nothing is ever too deep for sunflower butter bites.
Now I need to go read it!
I am all about cranberries – I don’t know what it is, and I think it just speaks to my weirdness, but I cannot eat raisins in baked goods but I love me some cranberry bread/muffins/scones. Haha. And I love this recipe!
My kids seem to feel the same way! Cranberries make them happy but they don’t like raisins in cookies and things 🙂
I look at my first posts and some are really bad. I have updated most of my recipe photos– on the other hand some of my posts I am very proud of. It’s fun to look back and see how I’ve changed and stayed the same. My posts were much more about my feelings and what was going on inside my head than they are today. It’s not that I don’t feel those things anymore, I just know how to deal with life so much better now– I used to over complicate things.. I’m much more at ease which is nice, but kind of boring! LOL
Same with me – it used to be more of a journal for me, but I think I ran out of things to say at some point! Now it’s more just me day to day, which I like. I think those “feelings” posts will pop up here and there though, which keeps it real 🙂
I need to start updating some of my old recipe photos – I think I shot my first few recipes using an iPhone, which makes me cringe. And then it took me several months to figure out how to work my DSLR. I guess that just means I’ll have to remake and re-eat all my recipes!
These bites look awesome. I love love love cranberries and the sunflower butter sounds extra good and creamy.
I’m really impressed by your photos, I haven’t seen any that need to change! But remaking delicious food is never a bad thing 🙂
I’m completely at the iPhone “stage” haha but I’m also not a “food blogger” by trade so I’m going with it. I think just that you are aware of your goal (like pinterest, I’ll start pinning your stuff, K?) is a good place to start although I hear you on impulsively jumping into a goal. I do think it’s cool to see blogs/bloggers develop over time and how the primary topics for a blogs beginning usually stick around.
I definitely didn’t start thinking “food blogger”, in fact I don’t think I had a plan at all, and if I did it never involved nice pictures! Interesting how things change. And the iPhone can do some pretty good pictures actually! Also thank you for any future pins, greatly appreciated!!
YESSSSSS i’m so in love with sunbutter again. but this time it’s a whole new love, because i made it myself from scratch and it is AMAZING!!!! i know i’m really excited but i can’t help it. first of all, it cost me $2.32 to make a jar of it so i love that part of course. and then the best is the taste. i tried making it before but didn’t toast the seeds and this time i did, wow what a difference. and some raw honey and sea salt and coconut oil. mmmmmm so now i can make these balls. oh yeah! i’m all over it. i’m a sunbutter nut head right now 😀
You and your homemade goodies! I’d love to try to make it myself, one day I will…maybe! And the addition of honey sounds so good, your butter will take these bites to another level I’m sure!
I always love when I see some coconut flour being used (in a none egg way). It’s a weird flour and I never know how I feel about it….thus never end up using it 😛
It’s great if you use the right amount. I learned that the hard way of course!
I don’t have the patience to go back and retake photos, but then again I don’t have alot of recipes. I posted new pictures of one recipe when I thought of it on the day I was cooking it, but that’s it. I wish I really could have a better understanding of pinterest!
I’m going to tackle mine slowly since there’s a lot to go through! I feel like I don’t have the time to look back on all my recipes, let alone cook them!
I love the ingredients! I always have those things on hand and I am ALWAYS looking for more snack ideas. These do look like a yummy kid (and mommy) friendly snack.
I am on team cranberry, but I do love raisins too.
I am a fairly new blogger, but I do have some recipe pictures that are just awful. Actually, I have stopped posting recipes because I feel like they will just get lost in the shuffle with my poor pictures. Do you use a certain camera? I am still just using my iPhone.
These are a great snack, I’ve been eating them every day!
These look delicious! I love sunflower butter, absolutely need to make these!
I love it too! Works so well in all different recipes 🙂
I definitely have a good laugh when I look back to some of my early posts, which is why I’ve been trying to reshoot and re-edit them whenever I have a spare moment… which isn’t nearly often enough. And I feel like I keep having ah-ha moments with blogging. It’s like no matter how much I Think I know, there’s always more to learn.
There is SO much to learn with blogging, and I’m not sure whether I should be relieved or freaked out that even YOU are still learning a ton! So confusing, and a big test of how much I trust my instincts. I can’t imagine you taking bad pictures, but I guess it’s all relative and many of us are in the same boat with finding time to fix the old ones 🙂
I’m drooling a little bit…these look AMAZING!! (And like I’ll need to try making them for my boyfriend’s son who is a bit of a picky eater…) 😉
Try them! I want to make another batch again already 🙂
I hear you with the re-doing of photos – I’m in that mode as well after I started looking at photos I could post on social media and being almost embarassed. But then we have so much food around, made just to have new photos. I really need to take a step back and chill for a few weeks now. Maybe with these bites!
I went through a big period last year of redoing photos for recipes that I thought deserved it and I have to say, as much work as it was at the time, it paid off! Some of those re-do photos became some of my most popular recipes thanks to pinterest! That said, it is a lot of work and you can’t go crazy with it. You can also just redo photos and re-post the recipe as well! I did that with a few of mine.
I just made these and they are firming up in the fridge now. I had to alter it based on what ingredients I had (almond butter with chia seeds instead of sunflower butter) and I left out the fruit. I tasted the dough before it went in the fridge and it was great! They are about 100 calories per ball and 6 grams of good fat so it fits in with my high fat diet. Thanks for the recipe!
Sounds good, really hope you like them! Love that at least with no-bake you can tell right away when you taste the dough 🙂
Its looking very delicious dish that you made here. Thanks for share here.
I was just wondering if you can freeze these or not I made too many lol
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Could you use a different flour? Thank you!
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