Coconut & date granola bars

Hello again! It does feel quite weird being back to writing posts on such a regular basis, but as I said, revision just makes me want to cook non-stop! Tonight was one of those experimental baking sessions. I knew that I wanted some sugar free snack to take to the library, preferably peanut-butter free because I have been eating way too much of that recently! I also bought some beetroots today so wanted to make something different with those. Ended up with some interesting carrot and beetroot muffins (recipe to come another day) and some awesome coconut and date granola bars.

These are much healthier than most bars out there! Only 15 g of added fat for the whole batch, and the only sweetener is dates, if you have a real sweet tooth, definitely add in some more dates or some other dried fruits to the dry mixture, such as raisins.Enough rambling because I need to get back to reading my finance book, so here is the recipe.

COCONUT AND DATE GRANOLA BARS

• 200 g oats
• 50 g flaked almonds (or nuts of choice)
• 100 g desiccated coconut
• 20 dates, roughly chopped (or more if you want a sweeter bar)
• 110 ml boiling water
• 3 tsp vanilla extract (+ 1 vanilla pod if you have any)
• 1 heaped tsp cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp coconut oil (or olive)
• 40 g protein powder (I used vanilla): optional, if not just add 1 tbsp oats

1. Pour the boiling water over the chopped dates and allow to soak for atleast five minutes. The next step is optional, you can either blend the dates and water up to make a smooth date paste or just leave the mixture as is and have bits of dates in your bar. I blended mine because it meant that every bite would be sweetened.
2. Mix together the oats, coconut, almonds, cinnamon and protein powder until combined.
3. Pour in the date paste, oil, egg and vanilla and mix it all together until well combined, if it looks too dry, add in a few drops of water. The mixture will look slightly crumbly, but is moist and sticks together when compressed down.
4. Pour the mixture into a lined baking tray and flatten/ compress firmly into the tray.
5. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned.
6. Once slightly cooled, shape into bars.

Xx

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