Homemade LARABAR

Our family absolutely loves Larabars and we eat them all the time. I found a few different recipes on Pinterest to get some ideas about how to make them myself and after a few experiments, I made four different flavors-all extremely delicious. I tried to keep an accurate account of the price of the ingredients I used for each batch and it worked out to be about 25-40 cents a bar. That is an incredible savings since Larabars are usually about $1 a piece. So if you love healthy snacks and you have a bit if time to experiment with delicious healthy ingredients, you will have fun creating your own flavors of Lara Bars. Here is the basic recipe I created…….

INGREDIENTS
½ cups pitted dates
½ cups dried fruit (figs, apricots)
⅔ cups almonds
1 tsp cinnamon (with fig)
1 small piece of fresh ginger (with apricot)

In Cuisinart, blend dates and dried fruit of your choice. When a ball forms stop the cuisinart and remove chopped dried fruit ball to a medium bowl. Add almonds to cuisinart and chop until coarse ( few small pieces of almonds remaining in the nut mixture works fine). Knead nuts and dried fruit together and form into bars or balls. Refrigerate for 20 minutes and eat or wrap in saran to enjoy later. Homemade Larabars can be frozen. Each batch makes 6-8 bars or 20-25 balls.

Here are a few of the variations on the original recipe above that we tried. These were delicious…

Peanut Butter and Jelly
1 cup peanuts
½ cup dried cranberries
½ cup dates
3 tablespoons natural peanut butter
Follow direction above for chopping dates and cranberries in Cuisinart. Remove to a bowl. Chop peanuts. Add to date mixture along with peanut butter. Mix and mold as directed above.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip
½ cup peanuts
½ cup cashews
1 cup dates
3 Tablespoons natural peanut butter
¼ cup mini chocolate chips
Follow directions above for chopping dates in Cuisinart. Next chop nuts together and add to dates. Stir in peanut butter and mini chocolate chips. Continue as directed above. What flavors of Homemade Lara Bars would you like to try?