Easy Healthy Snack Ideas!

Hey guys it's Diesel Jane. Today I'm going to be showing you some healthy and easy snack ideas. These recipes are all completely dairy-free, gluten-free and refined sugar-free. First I'm going to be showing you some really basic easy healthy snack recipes and then I'm going to be showing you some more DIY snack recipes so hopefully I can show you some new snack ideas that you'll love. So I'm quickly going to go over some really basic healthy snacks first and then after that we'll get into the more DIY healthy snack recipes. I know I've said it before but my go-to healthy snack is a piece of fruit and some raw nuts or some nut butter. It's such an easy snack and with that you're getting all three of the food groups, good carbs, good protein and some healthy fats as well. So these are some of the combinations that I love. Banana and raw almonds or banana slices with unsweetened peanut butter, apple slices with almond butter, raw cashew nuts and fresh blueberries, clementines or oranges with some raw almonds on the side, strawberries and pecan nuts or even strawberries and pistachio nuts is really good. But any kind of nut or nut butter with any fruit is so good. There are so many delicious combinations and it's so easy to just grab for a snack even when you're busy and this kind of snack will actually give you good sustained energy and it won't you know leave you with a sugar crash later. Avocado toast is such a great healthy snack too especially if you're feeling for something a little bit more savory or you know salty. I love either a piece of 100% whole rye bread or whole grain gluten-free bread toasted with about one third of an avocado on top and a little sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper. It's filling and a decent sized snack and it will give you great energy as well. But I mean avocado toast is nothing new. I mean like okay we've pretty much all tried it right. But here's a slightly different take on your basic avocado toast. So to start I've got the same thing again. A slice of 100% rye or gluten-free toast with one third of an avocado and things are about to get a little bit crazy here. I'm adding some fresh strawberry slices on top of that with some sea salt and black pepper and then finally a little splash of unsweetened balsamic vinegar drizzled on top. About half a teaspoon only because you don't want to make the toast go you know all soggy. So just a little drizzle. This combination is so insanely delicious and it's just a fun new take on your basic kind of avocado toast. Okay this is the easiest snack smoothie recipe with only three ingredients. Just the perfect little smoothie for an easy healthy snack. So here I've got one sliced frozen banana. I like to keep these in little ziploc bags in the freezer. You can also use two bananas instead of one if you want a bigger size smoothie or a thicker smoothie. Then one tablespoon of unsweetened almond butter for protein and a little delicious creaminess. And finally about half a cup of brewed black coffee. You can also use water if you don't like coffee. That works too. And just blend that up quickly and you've got a yummy banana almond coffee smoothie. This is a great pre or post-workout snack and like I said before you can easily double the banana to make the quantity bigger or to make the smoothie thicker. Okay and then just really quickly here's another random idea for some cheeky snacking. You can freeze any leftover smoothie in ice cube trays and then either re-blend those smoothie ice cubes later for an even easier smoothie snack that's like already made. You just have to re-blend it or you can just snack on those little frozen smoothie bites one by one when they're frozen. This is awesome for if you literally just want one little bite of something sweet after a meal. It's so good so I like to do that with this smoothie sometimes. Okay now get ready for one of my absolute favorite healthy cheeky snacks ever. We're making my one serving healthy Nutella and it's so easy to make. So the only ingredients are one tablespoon of unsweetened nut butter, about half a teaspoon of cacao powder. This is just raw cocoa powder and half to one teaspoon of 100% pure maple syrup and just mix that up. It's so easy. You can use any nut butter but I find that almond, cashew, macadamia or hazelnut butter work the best. One of those I usually just use almond butter. Okay and then what I love to do is dip raw almonds into this healthy Nutella. I know this is so random but it's so delicious. I'm so obsessed with this and this combination is full of good protein, good fiber and all sorts of goodness so it's just the best. But that's not the only way that I like this cheeky healthy Nutella. Dipping strawberries into it is also so good. This is like my healthy take on chocolate dipped strawberries. This is amazing. Or how about some healthy Nutella toast? I mean yes please. So just make that same recipe again. One tablespoon of nut butter, half a teaspoon of cacao powder and then half to one teaspoon of 100% pure maple syrup. Mix it all up and spread it out onto some gluten-free toast and if you want to get real fancy then you can also sprinkle a little bit of cacao powder on top just to make it look pretty. And there you go. Healthy Nutella toast which is pretty epic. Now here's a fun new take on your average peanut butter apple kind of snack. You may have seen this before but it's so good you guys. So I'm just going to show you this really quickly. I mean you can either slice up an apple and dip it into some peanut butter, you know your regular peanut butter apple snack, which is also really yummy. Or you can make these fun little peanut butter apple sandwiches. So all that I'm doing is slicing up an apple into slices. I'm actually using two apples today but you can just use one. Then you're going to want to core the apple slices. If you have some kind of cool kitchen gadget that can do this for you that would probably be easier. But I just cut out the little circle with my knife. I feel like these are some questionable knife skills you're witnessing here. Be careful when cutting your apples guys. Always be safe with your knife and keep your fingers away from the knife. So now I've got my cored apple slices and then I've also got some smooth unsweetened peanut butter and a little bit of cinnamon too. I'll take two apple slices at a time and I'm just spinning some of the peanut butter onto one of the slices and then sprinkling a little bit of the cinnamon on top of the peanut butter. This part is optional but it just adds that extra little something. Then put the other slice on top and there you have a little peanut butter apple sandwich. How cute! And just keep repeating that until all of the apple slices have been used up and you will have yourself a whole lot of little really cute healthy apple peanut butter sandwiches. This is such a fun snack to make. I love it. This next snack recipe might be the easiest healthy cookie recipe ever. It's these two ingredient banana oat cookies that I'm going to show you. Now I prefer to add some more ingredients which I'll show you in just a minute but these are really the only two essential ingredients that you'll need. So in a bowl I'm smashing up two wrapped bananas with a fork. The rougher they are the better these cookies will taste and if your bananas are very small then you might need three bananas. And then I'm adding one cup of rolled oats to the banana and totally optional a teaspoon of cinnamon is also really good with this mixture. Okay so now you don't have to do this part. It's totally optional. You can just leave the cookie batter as it is but I'm going to show you some optional ingredients that I like to use to change this recipe up really easily because I want to show you a bunch of different ideas in this video. I'm dividing this batter into three bowls but you don't have to do that. You can just do one kind of cookie if you want to. To the first bowl I'm adding a handful of chopped raw almonds. To the second bowl I'm adding a handful of raw cacao nibs. You could also use dark chocolate chips if you like that. And to the third bowl I'm adding just a handful of raisins and I'll mix the ingredients in each bowl together. I'm lining a baking tray with some parchment paper and then I'm also greasing that really quickly with a tiny little bit of coconut oil. You're gonna want to grease your tray so that the cookies don't stick and then I'm just spooning the batter from each of the bowls onto the tray and roughly making a cookie shape. I do about a heaped tablespoon amount for each cookie. I would have to say that my favorite cookie flavor out of the three that I'm showing you is definitely the raisin one. The raisins just add a little bit of extra sweetness naturally to the cookie which I love. If you're just using the two ingredients to make the cookies, only the banana and the oats and they're not quite sweet enough for you, just try adding a little bit of pure coconut sugar to the batter to make it you know more suited to your tastes. But the banana by itself is sweet enough for me especially if they're very ripe bananas. So if you do want to add a little bit of extra sweetener I would recommend using a little bit of coconut sugar and start with one tablespoon, test the sweetness and then add another tablespoon if you need it. Then you can just pop them into an oven that you've preheated to 180 degrees celsius or about 360 degrees fahrenheit for 15 to 20 minutes. I generally do 20 minutes. These are definitely more soft chewy cookies, not so much crunchy cookies. They're more like a healthy snack cookie than a treat cookie but I love them for that. And after baking you can remove them from the tray and eat them. I'm just dunking one into some almond milk here but I usually just grab two or three to take with me to work as a healthy snack. And this amount of batter generally makes about 15 cookies for me but you can always make the cookies a little bit smaller which will give you even more cookies. And then whatever you don't eat right away you'll want to store that in an airtight container to keep them fresh. Okay the last healthy snack idea that I'm going to show you today is the most DIY of them all and I would have to say my favorite of them all. Well tied with the healthy Nutella that I showed you. And this is actually also my sister's favorite healthy snack too. Out of all of the healthy snacks and treats that I've made for her in the past this has been her favorite. These are my healthy peanut butter coconut and oat bites. Okay so I'm just going to dive right into the recipe. To start what you'll need is two cups of dry rolled oats, one cup of unsweetened desiccated coconut, one cup of smooth unsweetened peanut butter, two teaspoons of pure vanilla extract, optional but it will make the flavor even more awesome, half to one teaspoon of cinnamon, a quarter cup of 100% pure maple syrup, that's about four tablespoons, and three to four tablespoons of melted coconut oil. I find that the easiest way to melt the coconut oil is by placing the oil into a small bowl and then placing that small bowl into a slightly larger bowl filled with hot water. Just wait a minute or two for it to melt and just be careful not to burn your hands when you handle this as well. So I've mixed all of that together. Now I'm just taking about a tablespoon amount at a time and pressing the mixture between my hands to form a rough ball shape. They don't have to be perfect or anything, just press them together tightly between your hands to form the shape. This does get a little bit messy but it is so worth it. They taste amazing and they will set really well in the fridge. I'm placing those little bite-sized treats onto a tray lined with parchment paper so that they don't stick and I'll just keep doing that using up all of the mixture until I fill up the tray. But I just want to show you something else really quickly. If you don't want to get your hands dirty, you know, or take the time to roll and press each one, then you can also just pour all of the batter onto a flat dish lined with parchment paper. I'm just using a plate lined with parchment paper and just press all of the batter down onto the tray and then once you're done just place all of the bite-sized treats and also the dish filled with the mixture into the fridge to set for an hour or two. You can also speed up this time by placing them into the freezer for about 30 minutes or so and then removing them from the freezer after that. And then once they're set, you can take them out of the fridge and they'll be ready to eat. If you decided to pour the batter into a dish, then you can now cut the set batter into squares with a knife and they'll be ready to serve on a dish or a tray if you're making them for guests or you can store them in the fridge for cheeky snacking. These are my favorite little healthy snacks for a late afternoon snack for when I get home from work. They're filled with good whole carbs, good protein and some healthy fats too. They're really nice and filling and they'll give you great energy. I've actually had this recipe on my blog for years. It's one of my favorites. And whatever you don't eat straight away, because they're really delicious, you can keep in an airtight container in the fridge and they can last for two weeks stored like that if you can actually keep them that long. So that is all of the healthy snack ideas that I'm going to show you today in this video. What I'm also going to do though is put all of these recipes over on my blog for you, even the basic ones. And over there I'll also give you a calorie breakdown and a suggested serving size for each one of these healthy snacks. If you'd like even more healthy snack ideas and inspiration, I've also shown you other healthy snack ideas in some of my other videos and in my what I eat in a day videos. So I'll link those videos below in the description box and I will also link some more healthy snack ideas that I have over on my blog that I think you might enjoy. I will put all of those links below in the description box for you. Thank you so much for watching this video. I really hope that you have enjoyed it and I hope that you found it helpful. Make sure that you give this video a thumbs up if you did enjoy it and subscribe to my channel for more videos and I will see you again soon.