Choco-coco-nana granola bars – an energy boosting snack!

Hey there!

 

 

So usually I would reach for fruit whenever I am feeling a little peckish through out the day. Yet recently I have been getting a little fed up with the apples, pears and bananas, which are basically the only fruit, sold at the supermarket at this time of the year. Of course you can buy all sorts of tropical and exotic fruit all year round yet I like to keep those for a special treat.

Well since I haven’t been feeling like apples nor bananas or pears I came to the decision to make myself some granola bars I could snack on throughout the day.

Of course I could have just gone out to the supermarket where the selection of readymade granola bars is humongous yet this would have been way less fun.

Hey, I’m calling myself a foodie for a reason; well I just love creating my own food hence I came up with these delicious choco-coco-nana granola bars.

 

The ingredients I used are actually rather basic and most of them you’ll probably find in your pantry without having to head to the grocers before getting started in the kitchen.

Since I made granola bars I obviously used oats as my base ingredient. Besides the oats I also added some coconut flakes, popped amaranth, cocoa powder, dates and then two small bananas. As always make sure to use very ripe bananas, the spottier the better, those ones are just so much sweeter. So if your bananas aren’t quite ripe enough you might want to add an additional sweetener such as agave, coconut sugar, stevia or just ordinary cane sugar, whatever floats your boat.

 

Anyways that’s it from my side let’s get on to the recipe to create those energy boosting super food bars.

 

 

Ingredients

 

• 80g oats
• 2tbs popped amaranth**
• 1tbs coconut flakes
• 1tbs cocoa powder
• 5 dates (40g)
• 20g goji berries*
• 2 bananas (the riper the better!!)

 

optional topping:

 

• 1 tbs of coconut butter
• a dash of matcha, acai powder or cocoa powder to colour your topping

 

 

1. Preheat your oven to 175°C (air circulation).
2. Pit your dates, peel your bananas and cut both into chunks. Add dates and bananas into a food processor and process until it reaches a smooth texture (don’t worry if there are still some chunks of date in the mixture).
3. Now mix the banana date paste with the rest of your ingredients until your mixture reaches a paste like consistency.
4. Spread your mixture about 1cm thick into a lined baking tin.
5. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until the edges of your granola bar come separate from the baking paper.
6. When you take your granola bar out of the oven let it cool down completely.
7. When your granola bar has cooled down completely slice it into equal sized bars, this mixture will leave you with approximately 6 small granola bars.
8. This step is optional yet it makes your granola bars look nicer and taste even better. Melt your coconut butter and add whatever flavouring to add some colour or if you like it white just leave it as is. Then drizzle your coconut butter mixture on top of your granola bars.

Voila, when the coconut butter drizzle has set your granola bars are ready to be eaten or else to be stored away to enjoy them later on. Those bars are the perfect snack for in between when you need a little energy boost to get you through the day. On top of having all those great ingredients they’re actually extremely tasty as well which obviously is always my main goal whenever I’m coming up with a recipe. Well who wants to eat food that isn’t delicious? Definitely not me!

So that’s it for today, enjoy creating those little energy boost bars and have a nice rest of the week!

 

Bisous

Fanny, the foodie

 

 

*you could also use cranberries, raisins or dried cherries if you can’t get your hands on goji berries

** can be substitute with 2tbs of any other cereal if you haven’t got popped amaranth on hand, you could even just add another two tbs of oats if you haven’t got anything else available