One of my main concerns about eating a raw foods diet has been mobility. When I am not at home or near a Whole Foods, I find it a challenge to eat something raw and uncooked. A large aspect of me being motivated to try my hand at these bars is due to my friend Griffen’s own homemade energy bars.
These energy bars are all about the balance between nuttiness and sweetness. The ingredients are held together by the paste of the dates. So if you want less sweet, you’ll probably want to use something like raisins or another dried berry to replace the dates. I had to add a few extra cups of dates to the original amounts I had at the beginning. I lost track of my measurements, so use your best judgement, and remember you can always add more ingredients if you have them.
Start by adding the roughly chopped dates to a food processor and work them into a paste. Then remove the dates paste and set it aside.
Add the nuts (I used pecans and cashews), coconut, and any of your other ingredients to the food processor and work them into a powdery mix.
Throw both mixtures into a bowl and begin kneading the ingredients together. The nut mixture will act to take away the stickiness of the dates. When the ingredients stop crumbling out of the main mixture and your confident that everything is mixed well, lay it out on a cutting board. Cut the mix into bar shapes or small squares. Use plastic or foil and wrap them up individually or keep them all together and save the materials and take them out one at a time.
I was blown away by the balance of the nuttiness of the cashews and pecans to the intense brown sugary sweetness of the dates. I grabbed some notes from this recipe but for the most part made it up as I went a long. She included some nutrition information in her post so I left that for you below. This is for her recipe but I imagine there are similarities in nutritional content.
Nutrition per Serving (1 bar): Calories 207; Fat 9.4 g (sat .8g, mono 5.2g, poly 3.1g); Protein 3.9g; Cholesterol 0mg; Carbohydrate 24.9g; Sodium 0.4mg
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I love making these kind of bars! So sweet, yet so natural
I know! Crazy how many variations you could do of these bars. Raisins, chocolate chips, more coarse of a grind on the nuts… Holy cow!