Chocolate Peanut Butter Energy Bars

You may have seen in the shops little bars called Nakd bars. Americans also have their own equivalent called Larabars. Essentially they are a bunch of smooshed up dried fruit and nuts and they get to say they are gluten free, dairy free, vegan and with no added sugar.  On top of this they have very few ingredients and but a decent amount of fibre and protein and suitable for a Paleo diet whatever that entails (eating dinosaurs I assume). I love a Nakd bar but they are pricey little buggers when you think about it at 75p for a 35g bar.

With my newly embarked on healthy eating mission I have also found Nakd bars to be a good pre-workout snack as the dried fruits and nuts are slow release energy fuel so to save myself a few pennies I decided to have a go making my own. My personal favourites are the chocolate orange ones and if you believe the packets they have only four ingredients - dates, cashews, raisins, cocoa and some natural orange flavouring (which yes even I can see that that is technically five!). So how hard could it be to make some?

In my search for a bit of inspiration on Pinterest I found various variations of recipes (check out my board Healthy and Wholesome) but decided to go for a Chocolate Peanut Butter for my first attempt.

Ingredients

The main ingredient in these bars are Dates because they have a sweet sticky texture that acts as a natural binding agent for all the other ingredients. I got my dates from Holland and Barrett and they are perhaps a little dry in texture which did make it slightly harder work for my poor food processor. A good medjool date with a softer texture would be ideal for this recipe but they are pricey. In perspective I paid £4.50 for 1kg so this recipe worked out at about £2 for the dates I used. The equivalent in medjool's would be around £5.
Lets talk nuts. I used un-roasted Cashews here because I was copying Nakd but you could use almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts whatever nut you fancy. I could have used a combination of cashews and peanuts what with the peanut butter but I just really love the creamy flavour of cashews. Fun fact - Cashews are actually lower in fat than most other nuts which in my book means I can eat more - WIN. I used the Peanut Butter we have at home which is smooth of course because Monkey doesn't like the crunchy stuff. If you wanted it to be raw and natural and organic and filled with rainbows and butterflies you could use some of the Meridian peanut butter or other fancy nut butters. For the chocolate hit I used unsweetened Cocoa Powder. The important bit is unsweetened. These bars are meant to be healthy with no added sugar. The world won't end if yours isn't but you won't feel quite as smug and self satisfied when you eat one.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Energy Bars

450g Dates
60g Cashews
190g Peanut Butter
2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

• Chop the dates up to make them easier to blend in the food processor. Put half in the food processor and blend until they break down and start to form a ball. Remove and put in a bowl and do the same with the remaining dates. NOTE - You could do this all in one go but if your dates are a little drier like mine were it can be pretty tough going on your food processor. I did it in two batches so that my machine would live to fight another day.
• Throw the reserved dates, cashews, cocoa and peanut butter in the food processor and whizz everything together until the cashews are finely ground and everything has come together.
• Line a baking tin with clingfilm and empty in the fruit/nut mixture. Press the mixture down into an even layer getting right up to the edges and in the corners. Pop in the fridge or freezer to firm up for an hour or so.

• Remove from the freezer and turn out onto a chopping board. Remove the clingfilm and cut into bars (2 x 10cm is a good size I think because whilst they are healthy they are still a treat!)

These will keep for up to 3 weeks in the fridge or longer if you wrap them up in cling film and freeze them.