Make Your Own Energy Bars at Home

(guitar music)

Energy bars.

They're a tasty, easy pick-me-up.

In these days, you can find them anywhere.

But who wants to shell out five bucks a pop

when you can make them at home.

I'll show you how.

Most energy bars are made up of the same building blocks.

First, you got your binder.

In this case, we're using dried cherries

but pretty much any dried fruit will work.

Then, body.

Something to really chew on in the bar.

For these, I got some quinoa and some seeds,

pumpkin and sunflower.

Finally, a little crunch.

I like some chopped almonds but really any crunchy nut

will work.

I put the quinoa, the seeds and the almonds

on a rim baking sheet and just stuck them in the oven

to toast until they're golden and fragrant.

So while your nuts and seeds are toasting,

prepare the binder.

So I've got my dried cherries here,

they're going to go right in the food processor.

Next, I've got a little brown rice syrup.

Then add a little water.

The cherries tend to actually bind up too tight

without a little liquid, so that's going to help

smooth it out.

And a little salt.

Okay, now let's give it a whiz.

So that looks good, it's nice and smooth,

it's almost like a paste.

So I'm just going to transfer that to this bowl.

Okay, so filling's in there.

In go my toasted nuts and seeds.

And then we fold it in.

Okay so now I'm going to transfer to my prepared pan.

So this is just an eight by eight inch baking dish,

I'm sure you've got one at home

and I've lined it with some parchment paper.

Leave an overhang on all sides, that way it's going

to be really easy to get the bars out of the pan.

So in they go.

So now that I've got my mixture in the pan,

we've reached the key moment.

So we're going to use my hands to kind of spread it out.

But to really pack it in, I like to use

the flat bottom of a measuring cup.

This is going to help the bars hold their shape.

If it gets a little sticky, you can even fold

the parchment over a little bit.

That kind of helps to get in the corners.

Okay, so those look pretty good and even.

So now I'm going to pop them in the oven at 200 degrees.

Just to dry them out.

Okay, so I've baked these low and slow, 200 degrees

until they were dry to the touch.

So let them cool completely

and since I left that parchment overhang,

out of the dish no problem.

So, just flip them over and peel back the parchment.

Now we're going to cut them into actual bars.

You can definitely cut them into squares but we like bars.

So you can see how they're still crunchy but also chewy.

They're a little bit wobbly, that's perfect.

For this and more energy bar recipes,

go to bonappetit.com/newhealthy.

See ya.

(guitar music)