The Road to Health – Raw Energy Bars

I’ve been on the Green Smoothie Challenge for 3 days now and so far I am loving it!  I am already feeling lots of positive benefits to starting my day with a tasty hit of fruit and greens, my energy has been much higher and I am feeling in better spirits.

But smoothies alone are not enough to sustain this bonneted lady; luckily I have discovered the perfect p.m. pick-me-up Raw Energy Bars!  I discovered the recipe on Green and Crunchy under home made Lara Bars (this blog is now inactive so I’ve taken the link down).  It caught my attention because our Naturopath recommended those bars for Stephen to keep his energy up in the afternoon.  So I thought that I would have a try!  I’ve made a few modifications because Susie is making much larger batches and I wanted to start with something smaller in case we weren’t keen.  I needn’t have worried!

Not only do these bars pack a nutritional punch they are utterly delicious.  We’ve enjoyed them immensely over the last couple of days, in fact I’ll be making another batch later to keep up with demand.  Here is the modified recipe that I used to make this first batch.

1 cup Raw Almonds (You can also use Cashews)

1 cup of Medjool Dates without the pits

1-2 teaspoons of Vanilla Essence

1 tblespn on Coconut Oil

1 tblespn of Almond Butter

1 tblespn of Sunflower Seeds

1 tblespn of Flax Seeds

Handful of Pecans (or nut of choice)

A squeeze of Honey (You could also use Agave or Maple Syrup)

Dark Chocolate drops – add to your own taste.  These are optional but a very good addition!

First add nuts to your blender/food processor and grind until they are a meal (gravelly texture), add the dates one at a time.  Then add the rest of your ingredients one at a time gauging the texture, if it is too dry add a bit more honey or another date to make it stick together.  Add your final batch of nuts right at the end so that they are not chopped too fine, same goes for the choccy drops which I added last and only pulsed once.  Then spread mixture into an 8 x 8 pan, at this point I cut the mix into bars before popping in the freezer to set.   This is what my mix looked like when it came out of the processor:

The mixture is nice and sticky and about the consistency of cookie dough but much, much healthier!  After they had spent about an hour in the freezer they looked like this:

Shortly after this I began putting them in my mouth and mumbling things like “Oh.  My.  Goddess.”  They really are that good.  As I mentioned before they go super well with a fruit smoothie and are the best mid afternoon snack or breakfast as they really do give you that protein boost that will sustain until dinner time.

It is well worth checking out Susie’s site Green and Crunchy and her posts on homemade Lara bars as she makes all sorts of suggestions on possible ingredients and how to substitute the nuts (basically use seeds).  I am planning on trying her Cashew Cream in the very near future, she recommends it with the energy bars as a super healthy but decadent breakfast.  Oh well, if I really must….

Let me know how you get on with the recipe and please do post any links for raw food goodies you recommend!