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No matter how disciplined I try to be with my diet, sometimes I just need a little snack. Either I need a quick grab-and-go breakfast, a little something to tide me over before dinner, or just something sweet to satisfy my inner cookie monster. I try to avoid straight-up junk food in my daily diet like cookies and cakes but let’s face it — commercial “healthy” granola bars aren’t much better. They’re loaded with sugar and fat, and contain ingredients like “Soy Lecithin” and “Natural Flavors.” While these ingredients may not be terribly unhealthy, they are not whole foods. As a result, I’ve been experimenting with creating my own whole-foods snack bar that can fill the hole left behind by the processed junk foods I’ve tried to eliminate from my diet.
I think I’ve found the answer. These fruit, nut and oat based bars are filling, satisfying and delicious. And the best part is that they’re dairy free, oil-free and naturally sweetened. So far, my favorite way to make these is to press them into the bottom of a baking pan, refrigerate, and then cut into squares after they’ve had an opportunity to set. But you could also cut into bars, or roll into balls if you prefer a different shape.
A batch of these bars can be whipped up in just under 20 minutes. They make great travel snacks, for the holiday travel season ahead. And of course, as long as you keep the quantities about the same, you can experiment with different types of nut butters and ingredients to find your favorite flavor combinations. If you have a gluten allergy, please be sure to use gluten-free oats.
Nutty Chocolate Snack Bars – Cliff Bar Clone!
Ingredients
- 10-12 dried but sticky Mejool or Noor Dates
- 1 cup rolled oats if avoiding gluten, gluten-free oats are fine
- 1/2 cup raw almonds
- 1/2 bar 2 oz vegan chocolate bar, coarsely chopped, or 2 oz vegan chocolate chips
- 1/4 cup peanut butter or almond butter or any other nut butter
- 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
- 1/4 cup flax seeds
- 2 tbsp. chia seeds
- 2 tbsp. maple syrup or agave nectar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Line a bread pan or brownie pan with parchment paper and spread the almonds and oats out evenly. Try not to mix them up too much. Bake for 10 minutes until lightly toasted.
- Meanwhile, pit the dates and rinse them.
- Add the damp dates to the food processor and blend thoroughly, until they begin to form a dough-y texture, stopping to scrape down the sides, as needed.
- Add sunflower seeds, flax seeds and chia seeds, peanut butter and maple syrup or agave nectar to the date mixture, and continue to blend thoroughly.
- Remove the oats and almonds from the oven. Add the oats to the food processor and continue to blend while coarsely chopping the almonds.
- When the almonds have cooled, add the chopped almonds and chocolate to the food processor, and then pulse to just combine (or, you could stir in manually).
- Line your bread pan or brownie pan with parchment paper (you can use the same piece from before) and then press the processed mixture into the bottom of the pan until it’s about 1/2-inch thick. I covered the top of the mixture with a scrap of parchment paper, and then used the base of a large mason jar to flatten the mixture down. The mixture should be stiff.
- Wrap the flattened sheet in parchment paper and use tape or twine to secure closed.
- Refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour before removing the sheet from the refrigerator and then cutting into bars or squares weighing about 2 ounces each.
- wrap each bar in a scrap of parchment, and store them all in a bag in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
- Makes approximately 16 2 oz. bars.