I’m on a mission: to create a healthy snack bar for adults and kids. I’ve found that many parents buy granola bars or other types of snack bars and bring them to the playground or the pool. Adults are always looking for snacks on the go. So far I’ve experimented with adding more nuts and seeds and dried fruit and whole grains. Eventually, I’d like to make bars that have a vegetable or beans in them and less sugar than regular snack bars but that are still tasty. I did make zucchini muffins that were delicious!
I have some basic ingredients that I use, adding or subtracting from the list each time. I don’t use all of these ingredients in any one recipe, especially the sugar.
The ingredients are:
Seeds: sesame seeds; sunflower seeds; pumpkin seeds
Nuts: almonds; peanut butter
Sugar: sugar, brown sugar, honey, corn syrup, applesauce (one or more of these)
Flavoring: vanilla or orange extract
Dried fruit: raisins, apricots, prunes, dates
My latest bar did not require baking but it did require refrigeration. This could be a problem for those wanting a bar with a long shelf life. It tends to get extremely gooey after it warms up. There are sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, almonds and peanut butter; dried fruit and a banana (I wanted to see how that tasted); corn syrup and applesauce. I have concluded that corn syrup with applesauce is too much liquid making the bars a bit gooey even when chilled. Next time I would use less corn syrup and use regular sugar instead of applesauce.
Another bar I made recently had brown sugar and honey as the sweet ingredients with plenty of nuts and raisins too.