Energy Bars

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onto the topic of today’s post…ENERGY BARS!

This recipe for Energy Bars comes from Ellie Krieger.  Since this was my first time making these, I decided to follow the recipe almost to a “T” with a few slight modifications.  However, feel free to make any changes you would like, as there is room for a lot of variation of spices, dried fruits, and nuts/seeds.  Although the original recipe does not call for salt or much spice, I would definitely suggest that you do add salt and other spices.  Otherwise, you will have a pretty bland energy bar.  This recipe also calls for you to process all of the ingredients into a paste.  The next time I make this recipe I am going to experiment by keeping some of my ingredients whole as I tend to enjoy chunkier bars.

Energy Bars

Yield: 20 Bars

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 1 cup quick cooking rolled oats
• 1/2 cup raw unsalted sunflower seeds
• 1/2 cup toasted wheat germ
• 1/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (I used plain whole wheat flour)
• 1/2 cup dried apricots
• 1/2 cup raw almonds
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup pitted dried dates
• 1/2 cup powdered nonfat dry milk
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
• 2 large eggs
• ~1/4 teaspoon salt
• ~1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Coat a 9 by 13-inch baking pan with cooking spray.
2. Place all ingredients except the syrup and eggs in a food processor and pulse until the mixture is finely chopped. Add the syrup and eggs and pulse until the mixture is well combined. It will resemble a coarse paste.
3. Transfer to the baking pan and spread evenly. Bake until just done, about 20 minutes. Cut into 20 squares.**

**Note: When transfering mixture to baking pan, it is very sticky and hard to spread.  I found that lightly greasing my hands with oil helped make this process A LOT easier!

Question: What is your favorite brand of packaged energy bars (clifbar, lunabar, larabar, powerbar,etc)?  Do you have a recipe for an energy/granola bar?

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Tagged as: Almonds, apricots, dried dates, ellie krieger, energy bars, maple syrup, nutmeg, Raisins, rolled oats, sunflower seeds