A friend shared these recipes for me for the Whole Life Challenge and they're phenomenal.
I made the coconut version today but subbed dry (no sugar) mango and peach for the cherry and only used 1 tbls coconut oil so added in 4 more dates.
Apricot Bars
½ cup raw almonds
1 cup raw pecans
¼ teaspoon sea salt
12 pitted Medjool dates
1 cup dried apricots (unsweetened)
Spice Bars
1 cup raw almonds
½ cup roasted cashews
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
20 pitted Medjool dates
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
Coconut-Cherry Bars
1 cup raw almonds
½ cup raw pecans
12 pitted Medjool dates
1 cup dried cherries (unsweetened)
2 tablespoon coconut oil
1/2 cup finely shredded coconut flakes (unsweetened)
¼ teaspoon salt
The directions are the same for the first two recipes with only a couple minor differences for the coconut
cherry bars. For whichever bar you decided to make, follow these steps:
1) In a food processor, pulse only the nuts and the sea salt until finely chopped but still chunky. Some
will be ground up almost like almond meal but they will not all be consistent, and that’s totally ok.
2)Pour your nuts into a mixing bowl.
3)Add the dried dates and other dried fruit to the food processor and process until it makes a paste (it
will probably turn into a giant sticky ball when it’s done).
4) For the last recipe, add the coconut oil to the dates and cherries and process the three items together.
5) Add the date mixture to the nuts and use your hands to kneed the nuts and the dates together until
well mixed (this is messy but fun). For the last recipe, pour the coconut flakes into the bowl with the
nuts and then add the date mixture and kneed away.
6) Grease a baking sheet with either grass fed butter or coconut oil.
7) Make a big ball out of your bar mixture and push it down onto your greased baking sheet. Cover the
ball with some plastic wrap and using a rolling pin (or a bottle of wine if you don’t own a rolling pin), roll
out the mixture to your desired thickness. I like mine about 1/2 an inch thick or a little less.
Cut the rolled out mixture into the desired shape and amount that you would like.
I did not make mine as big as the store bought Lara Bars because they are often too big for my kids and making them into
small approximately 2 inch squares seems to be perfect for us! Each recipe makes about 15 bars and I figured it cost approximately .50 cents per bar, so that’s about 45 bars for $22! I purchased the dates and nuts from Trader Joes and the dried cherries and apricots from
my local health food store.
