Homemade Larabars

So it's been a few weeks and I haven't touched ridden a bike for more than 30 minutes.  No injury, just taking a bit of a breather before the chaos that is my cyclocross starts in full force.  All of a sudden I have an extra 15-20 hours every week and have no idea what to do with myself.  Such was the inspiration for my most recent project, an attempt to my homemade Larabars.


As a cyclist I've tried loads of nutritional products both on and off the bike.  While I've found that Dr. Will Bars work great while on the bike, I always like a little bit of variety and was looking for something a little lighter that could be used as a snack during the day.  Below are my first two attempts:  a lower calorie, fruity bar made with dried cherries, and a higher calorie, sweeter version with peanut butter and chocolate (best combination ever, no contest).

When cooking I'm not a huge fan of following recipes to the letter so I did some improvising.  After a little searching around I came up with a rough template and went to work.  Like I said, these are rough so feel free to experiment.  One note, you need a food processor to do this.  Go ahead and get one of the cheap, smaller ones, you don't need the huge $200+ KitchenAid one; the $20 knock-off should work just fine.

Very Cherry Bars

Ingredients

• ¼ cup chopped dates (not pre-chopped)
• ¼ cup dried cherries
• 1/3 cup raw whole pecans, almonds or walnuts (I used almonds with a few pecans thrown in)
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

Instructions 

1. Lay out two sheets of plastic wrap; do this now because you'll have sticky fingers later
2. Place dates and cherries in food processor; process until a paste
3. Place paste in medium bowl, no, make that a large bowl; trust me, it looks small but you'll want the wiggle room
4. Add nuts to processor and pulse until finely chopped
5. Add the nuts, along with the cinnamon, to the bowl with the fruit paste
6. Use fingers to knead the nuts into the paste (think Play-Dough); keep mixing to cinnamon is fully incorporated, see what I said about sticky fingers?
7. Lay out bars in desired size, place second plastic sheet over the top, roll to desired thickness, cut and wrap

Nutrition:

Calories:  414

Fat:  18.8g (1.6g sat, 10.6g mono, 6.2g poly)

Protein:  7.8g

Cholesterol:  0mg

Carbohydrate:  49.8g

Sodium:  0.8mg

For the Chocolate Peanut Butter bars omit the cherries and process one heaping tablespoon of semi-sweet chocolate with the nuts.  During step 6 (play-dough mushing stage) mix in ~2 tablespoons creamy peanut butter.  Looking for a protein and sugar boost while on the bike?  This is it.

Also, I highly recommend throwing the bars in the fridge for at least half an hour, I've found that this firms them up very nicely so they don't fall apart as easily.  

I'm going to try a few more combinations but I'd encourage you to research and experiment on your own.

chocolate peanut butter on the left; cherry on the right

You know the best thing about these?  Not only can you fine-tune the recipe to get exactly what you want out of them but they probably cost a quarter of  what a single Larabar costs.  DIY wins again.

Lastly, I have to give credit to Angela over at Oh She Glows; she's put together some great posts and I'll admit that my procedure closely follows hers.