Richard and I have been promising to ourselves that we’d make our own energy bars. Since Yudai is joining us tomorrow night and he and Rich will be bravng the cold to climb on Saturday, I thought I’d make them some treats. So, finally, round #1 is underway!

Since I was already mucking up the food processor, I figured I’d make several test batches. All, roughly, have oats, rice crispies, and flax seeds as the dry base, and most have one or all of brown rice syrup, tahini, nut butter as the “glue”.

Batch #1: Snack Bars

Flax seeds, rice crispies, dry oats, pitted honeyed dates, raisins, dried apricots, raw sunflower seeds, sliced almonds, white sesame seeds.
Brown rice syrup, natural peanut butter, almond extract, vanilla extract.

Batch #2: Protein Balls

Flax seeds, rice crispies, cooked oats, dry oats, pitted honeyed dates, raisins, dried apricots, raw sunflower seeds, sliced almonds, white sesame seeds.
Brown rice syrup, tahini, vanilla extract.
Two scoops of protein powder.

Batch #3: Chocolate Espresso Nut energy bars

Flax seeds, rice crispies, dry oats, dried cranberries, sliced almonds, white sesame seeds, chocolate (90%).
Brown rice syrup, tahini, almond butter, cashew butter, more chocolate (90%).
Ground espresso beans.

Batch #4: “Lara” bars

Flax seeds, rice crispies, dry oats (far fewer in quantity than the first 3 batches).
Pitted honeyed dates, raisins, sliced almonds, almonds, white sesame seeds (more of these ingredients than the other batches).
Brown rice syrup, tahini.
This one is the closest to a Lara Bar since the raisin and date proportion is higher than the rice crispies and other filler.

Observations:

• Use wax paper to press into a form but use it sparingly and don’t completely wrap using it. After the bars solidified slightly, it was at times difficult to peal the paper away.
• Process the dried fruit with some seeds or nuts otherwise it really gums up the blades and sticks to the bowl too much.
• Use tin foil to wrap each individual bar or ball.
• It’s tempting to use your hands. Don’t. It’s not nearly as effective as bread batter.