How to Make Larabars
1 May 2011
This is sort of my second attempt at making homemade Larabars. The thing is that I eat a lot of them, so it makes sense for me to start buying raw ingredients and making them myself.
The first time I sort of made them I was actually following a recipe from Thrive. As I was making it I thought, this is going to be like a Larabar. And it was. It was like a Larabar, but quite different. It had more ingredients. Nutritional ingredients, sure, but it also made it taste quite a bit different.
If you're familiar with Larabars, then you probably know that they have very few ingredients. My favorite flavor is simply cashews and dates. I'd say they have four ingredients on average.
So here's how I made it:
1 c Cashews, raw
1 c Medjool Dates
1 c Coconut, shredded
First I put the cashews in my Vitamix and ground it up so most of it was floury, but there were still some bits. Then I poured that into my KitchenAid mixer.
Again with the shredded coconut. Vitamix then KitchenAid. I don't think the Vitamix was necessary for the coconut because it was already pretty fine.
Then I removed the pits from the dates and threw them straight into the KitchenAid.
Set it to "mix" until it was a nice dough.
Spread that out on parchment paper and I simply used the paper to smoosh it into a square that was pretty thick. You know, the thickness of a Larabar. Half an inch, I guess.
Then I cut it into bars and that's that.
Now the hardest part is going to be packaging it so that I can bring it to work. I guess I'll probably just use cling wrap. I'll just have to be a little more careful not to let it get squished in my bag.
Next I'll experiment with a few different ingredients, but dates are always a base, and most will also have cashews. I suppose I could use almonds instead for some of them.
If you don't have a Vitamix, you may want to buy cashew flour and mix it with small pieces of cashews.
Also, you can use your hands to mix all the ingredients together rather than using a mixer.
