My Base/Simplest Recipe

Ingredients

• Yoghurt
• Protein powder

Approximate ratio is 1 heaped tablespoon of yoghurt to 4-5 scoops (using the supplied scoop in protein powder bags) of protein powder to make about 5 balls.

Matching yoghurt + protein powder flavours is a bonus. I currently use vanilla + vanilla.

Method

Protein powder in bowl, scoop of yoghurt on top, mix. Use your hand (or a small ice cream scoop) to shape into balls. Put into container and pop into fridge.

Add more yoghurt/protein powder for desired stickiness. You may want it feeling completely dry, or maybe you’d like it a little sticky.

How to think about formulating your own protein ball recipes to get a better idea of how to customise to your needs.

Two main components: the sticky/binding ingredients (e.g. the yoghurt), and the dry ingredients (e.g. protein powder). Below I’ll list a bunch that tends to be found in other protein ball recipes.

Other sticky/binding ingredients:

• Peanut butter (which is technically nuts which is protein heavy, but check the label to make sure it’s not padded up with random other ingredients!)
• Maple syrup (this one confuses me a little, but hey, maple syrup is delicious anyway)
• Flavoured syrup of your choice.

Other dry ingredients:

• Oats
• Chia/hemp/superfood/seeds
• Other nutritious powders (for me I suck at eating greens, so I’ve tried adding a green powder supplement and surprisingly it doesn’t affect taste)

How much you add/substitute of whatever additional ingredients is up to you, but naturally this will change the stickiness/dryness of the final product.

In general, the other ‘usual’ ingredients in protein balls are chosen because they have protein in them (surprise surprise!) or are ‘superfood’ ingredients. But you can still add in whatever else you want so long as you’ve got a sufficiently sticky/dry ingredient ratio.

Now onto the rambly part that everybody fucking hates about recipe websites

This is such a random thing to write, Matt. Why now?

Ever since I started seriously cooking for myself a few years ago (i.e. when I moved out into my own place) there was a noticeable frustration I was having with recipes in terms of “How do I think about the ingredients?” I wasn’t comfortable with just following a recipe and directions, I wanted some flexibility in terms of understanding what each ingredient contributed to the dish, so that if I was missing an ingredient or wanted to customise a recipe, I’d have a better idea of how to do so. Some part of it was no doubt motivated by the anime “Food Wars!” and perhaps, even the Iron Chef series back on SBS a long time ago.

Closer friends have mentioned that I tend to think like an engineer, and as such did recommend me e.g. https://www.cookingforengineers.com/ and other food science content creators, but surprisingly enough I haven’t really paid much attention to them or watched them. It seemed more fun to just figure it out, y’know?

But in the end so long as I do generic recipe searches and run up against the same problem I figure that I should at least blog and share how I think to others in the hopes that it spurs or helps someone else figure out a piece of the complex puzzle that is life.

Okay, but why protein balls?

I feel like every (if not most) men goes through a protein powder period at some point where it becomes a noticeable portion of one’s diet. Maybe they’ve started working out, or they’re annoyed at having to eat food and needed something simple.

And now that I’m well past that period of drinking protein shakes (because for me it’s a pain in the arse to wash the damn bottle EVERY TIME, dealing with clumping powder, getting bored of the taste, and every other conceivable problem you could think of) I was trying to figure out ways I could still use up protein powder into something that was ‘just nice and convenient’. So protein balls it is! And they’re surprisingly convenient as a snack to either bring to work or to nom at home in a flash.

Riiight, but why go so far to figure out how to customise them?

Because I was weirded out by the addition of peanut butter (which I’d never really seriously tried up until I started experimenting with protein balls) that was prevalent in most other protein ball recipes I looked up. And it also seemed like peanut butter and the flavour of protein powders I had would just….not work?

But now that I’ve figured out “the” base recipe and how to think about making my own protein balls, I can at least experiment with taste now. And good god peanut butter and maple syrup does NOT go together for me.

Is this going to be a “thing”?

Not a regular thing. No. But given that I don’t really see other online recipes (at least from the first few google search results) do anything similar in terms of teaching the reader of “how to think about food” or have an “easy version” for newbies, I figure I should at least have my own version.