Lemon Butterfly Pea Flower Protein Bites (white beans)

Lemon Butterfly Pea Flower Protein Bites (3-ingredients, white beans)
You might recall my other protein workout bites, including the one with blueberries, and this one with chocolate, and even the one featuring carrots and cantaloupe here.

A Healthy, Whimsical Tea

Today, I decided to add another version to the list.
And feeling whimsical, I decided to play with colors using a special tea – butterfly pea flower tea. I love this unusual tea for it’s nutritional strength – same as green tea, caffeine free aspect and mood-ring-like entertainment value.

And I used bananas since I wanted a really creamy texture, and bananas also provide sweetness and a strong enough flavor to overcome the any bean flavor. And, as with my other workout snack bites, the protein in these recipes comes from white beans.
I have used white beans quite successfully in the other high protein bites I mentioned earlier, this wildly popular white bean cookie dough recipe here, and even a few more recipes – you can see a few under my white bean recipes listing here.

Benefits of White Beans

In these protein bites, white navy beans provide the perfect blank palate to carry the fruity flavor of ripe soft fruits. So the result is highly nutritious and energizing.

The beans themselves are full of protein, fiber and a slew of other nutritional benefits, including potassium and iron, good for shiny hair among other effects; thiamine for a boost to your cognitive abilities; heart-supporting folate and magnesium, and copper to fight inflammation and antioxidants.

I chose to use organic canned beans though I’m sure freshly cooked beans would work as well. If you use canned, be sure to use organic, to be sure the beans don’t have additional ingredients. And I chose unsalted so I could control the sodium.
In this recipe, the addition of butterfly pea flower tea brings the same health benefits of green tea, but without any caffeine. It tastes like green tea too. (Although I add so little to this recipe, the taste isn’t evident.)

But what is really fun about butterfly pea flower tea is it’s fun color-changing characteristic. If you aren’t familiar with it, it becomes a deep blue once steep in hot water. And then, if you add a spot of lemon, the acidity turns the color purple. (Oh, and if you regret your choice, add in some baking soda to reverse the color change – although don’t do that to this recipe please, experiment on your own time, hahaha)

And there is the glorious banana. I use them as ripe as possible so it sweetens the recipe. And the fiber and potassium the fruit contributes, really pairs well with the white bean contributions to make a nutritionally robust pop-in-the-mouth snack.

All About the Lemon

The lemon addition comes from the tea, of course, but more strongly from the addition of a superfood powder I love, Baobab. Baobab is made from a fruit native to South Africa and has long been used for medicinal purposes given it’s antioxidant strengths and incredibly high levels of bio-available vitamin C. It even has decent levels of potassium, calcium, magnesium, and protein. And it tastes like lemons! Perfect for this recipe.

I like using molds or mini cupcake papers to shape these because then, frozen, they can be readily popable into the mouth prior to a workout, or when you just plain hungry for something nutritious and fruity.

I keep a giant bag of all sorts of flavors frozen, and when we want to eat some, we let them sit on a dish for a few minutes until soft enough to dissolve in the mouth. Best energizing candy ever!!