Homemade Fruit and Nut Bars [LARAbars]

I have fallen in love with Amy Layne’s website, DAMY Health; her recipes are clean but seem indulgent and are also quite simple to make.  When I saw her post on making your own Larabars, I knew I had to try it. I love Larabars. They’re a simple fruit and nut bar with only a few ingredients that naturally satisfy a craving for something sweet, plus they’re naturally gluten free, dairy free, soy free and vegan. However individually packaged snacks don’t fit into our budget so it’s a rare indulgence for me. I love the idea of making my own fruit and nut bars at home. So economical, fresh and no packaging to go to waste!

I followed Amy’s recipe and they were super easy to make. Her measurements make about 3 bars, which hardly seemed worth cleaning the food processor to me so I doubled it for each of the flavours I made. To make six bars, you simply process a cup of dates (or combination of dried fruit), a cup of nuts and mix together with any flavourful ingredients you want to add. Check out her recipe page for lots of great combos. I made “Cashew Cookie” bars first, which are simply dates, cashews and a pinch of sea salt. My second batch was raspberry almond flavour, using raspberry flavoured cranberries in place of some of the dates and half almonds, half cashews for the nuts. The cranberries are sweetened and also very flavourful, so I didn’t use too many and I left the almonds a little chunky because I really like almonds. I took a few pictures to show you the process. You’re definitely going to want to give these a try!

First step: process fruit until it forms a paste. It formed a ball in the food processor like this.

Second step: process nuts until finely chopped. Make sure they’re still chunky, you don’t want flour.

Step three: mix the two together by hand. Add a wee bit of water if the mixture seems too dry.

Form into bars or balls by hand and chill for a few minutes to set. Here are my finished bars, in cashew cookie and raspberry almond

And that’s it! I had a dozen bars in no time flat, which between me and the kids aren’t going to last long!

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