Homemade Larabars

A few weeks ago I was at Fred Meyer in the nutrition section. (I love that area!) I happened to walk past the snack bars and saw Larabars. I remembered reading about them recently, so I decided to take a look. I was pretty impressed with what I saw - they have just a few ingredients, and all of the ingredients are real food! While I was looking at the different bars and comparing the nutrition info, one of the employees came over. She asked if I needed any help, so I asked her if she had ever tried the Larabars. She began to tell me how good they are and pointed out her favorite flavors. Then she did something toatally unexpected. She asked if I wanted to try one. I'm not one to ever pass up free food, so I said sure, and picked the Lemon Bar. I couldn't believe how good it tasted! It didn't have any odd, chalky flavor like many snack/protein bars do. It tasted real.

When I got home I looked up the website to find out more information. It turns out these bars don't just taste good, but they're gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, non-gmo, vegan, and kosher. There are currently 16 different flavors, as well as a line for chocolate lovers. (I've tried two of these and haven't been as impressed by the flavor.)

The ingredient list is so simple that I decided to make my own Larabars. There are a number of recipes available on the internet, but I decided to work straight from the bar. I chose the Cherry Pie Bar because it had only 3 ingredients, and I love cherry pie! I went to a site called FitDay, where you can plug in foods and get the nutritional value. I then plugged in amounts of dates, almonds, and dried cherries until I came out with numbers that matched up on the Larabar package. It really isn't as time consuming as it sounds. I think it took five minutes at the most.

Now that I knew how much of each ingredient I needed I was ready to make them. This is when it was really handy to have a food scale. If you don't have one, I highly recommend it. I have a digital one, accurate to the gram/ounce. Anyway, here is the recipe I ended up with. They are very good, and taste a lot like cherry pie (without all the work!) As I come up with more flavors, I'll add the recipes to this post.

Homemade Larabars - Cherry Pie
Yield: 16 - 48 g bars

320 g dates
256 g almonds
192 g dried cherries

Place almonds in a food processor. Process until finely chopped. Pour into large bowl. Process dates and cherries together. Warning: don't go too long or they'll turn into a large mass! Place in bowl with almonds. Use your hands to blend them together and shape into bars. Store in the refrigerator in an airtight container.