4-ingredient Healthy Muddy Buddies Recipe (aka Healthy Puppy Chow) (2024)

Dec 4, 2017

Muddy Buddies (or Puppy Chow, whatever you call it!) are the EPITOME of an unhealthy treat. It’s a chocolatey, peanut buttery, sugary snack known for it’s crunchy and delicious, bite-sized goodness. Recipes call for margarine, lots of powdered sugar, and a ton of chocolate and peanut butter. It’s definitely one helluvatreat calorie bomb. And fat bomband sugar bomb. Thankfully, I made HEALTHY Muddy Buddies (or Healthy Puppy Chow) for you!

Thanks to Ozery Bakery for sponsoring this post, and thank YOU for supporting the brands that keep Desserts With Benefitsgoing! All opinions are mine and mine alone.

Classic Muddy Buddies/Puppy Chow recipes are made with:

• 9 cups Chex Cereal
• 1½ cups Powdered Sugar
• 1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• ½ cup Peanut Butter
• ¼ cup Margarine

Chex cerealis made with refined sugar and genetically modified ingredients. Powdered sugar is ahighly refined, bleached, high-calorie, and high-glycemic ingredient with zero nutritional value. Margarine, probably the worst part, isan imitation “butter” spread made up of hydrogenated oils, preservatives, and artificial flavors. Don’t even get me started on hydrogenated oils. I’ve been on a mission to get them out of the food industry ever since I was a senior in high school. Over the years as a Nutritional Sciences major in college, I probably spoke in front of a total of 400 students and professors about the dangers of hydrogenated oils (from cardiovascular disease to stroke to increased inflammation and cholesterol, etc.). Okay, rant over.

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Anyways, all that above doesn’t sound too appetizing, now does it?

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That’s why I made this super easy and healthified, 4-ingredient recipe. Made with:

• Chex CerealChopped and toasted Ozery Bakery MultiGrain OneBuns
• Powdered Sugar Powdered Erythritol
• Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips Dark Chocolate
• Peanut Butter Natural Peanut Butter (always make sure to use natural peanut butter to avoid the dangerous hydrogenated oils/trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup!)
• Margarine

As a healthier alternative to the cereal, I used Ozery Bakery’s Organic MultiSeed OneBun Squares. Out of the package, they’re super soft, light, and fluffy, but alsohearty and filling. They’re made with organic whole wheat flour, healthy flaxseeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, and even chia seeds! I baked them for 20 minutes at 325 degrees Fahrenheit until they were nice and crunchy. And they tasteway better than Chex. As a healthier alternative to powdered sugar, I usedPowdered Erythritol, which is all natural and non-GMO! I also made sure to use natural peanut butter to avoid the artificial ingredients in most conventional PB tubs, and totally got rid of the margarine. Who needs that sh*t anyways.

But really now, what do these healthier alternatives do? Well, for one, my Healthy Muddy Buddies haveless than HALF the calories, abouthalf the fat, and a fraction of the sugar (if you want to get technical, it has ⅒ the amount of sugar as the original). And a bonus? It’s dairy free and vegan too!

This truly is the greatest treat and perfect snack. It’s crunchy, sweet, chocolatey, peanut buttery, and of course, delicious. I could eat this stuff ALL. DAY. LONG.

Click here to seethe nutrition label for a typical(aka unhealthy) Muddy Buddiesrecipe.

Yeah. Isn’t that insane? But let’s skip to the good part now… these Healthy Muddy Buddies/Healthy Puppy Chow. The crunchy bites of sweet chocolate and rich peanut butter? Utter perfection.

I have this bad habit of going to the fridge just to see if I want to eat something even though I might not be hungry, so I made sure to portion out the whole batch into individual baggies and stuck about half the bags in the freezer. This made it easier to snack with dignity (aka, not stand in front of the fridge, door wide open, munching away on an entire tray of these Muddy Buddies 😉

To my surprise, these Healthy Muddy Buddies are actually quite filling due to the high fiber content, protein, and healthy fats. In my sugar-addicted childhood days, if I had a tray full of the original Muddy Buddies, I never would have stopped eating because sugar doesn’t make you full, it makes youhungrier.

When I ran out of the pre-portioned baggies in the fridge, I dug into my freezer stash. And pro tip guys, this stuff is amazing straight from the freezer! 😉

These Healthy Muddy Buddies are one heckuva delicious indulgence. I don’t feel bad about eating a bad a day. After all, this recipe is homemade, low calorie, very low in sugar, high in fiber, high in protein, and contains healthy fats only. If I had eaten a third of a tray of theoriginal(read: unhealthy) Muddy Buddies, I would’ve thought, “Oh, sh*t!”

Enjoy!

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With love and good eats,

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–Jess

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