Vegan Gluten Free Protein Granola Bars

Update 17/3  

Since I originally made these bars, I've done a little tweaking to reduce the sugar and calories whilst not losing the protein content, and they currently sit at 215 calories with 10g protein.

2 cups/160g oats
1/2 cup milled flaxseed
55g soy protein powder
1/2 cup agave nectar
1/2 cup cashew nuts
1/2 cup raisins
50g omega sprinkle (a seed mix from holland and barratt, but any seeds will do)
1 banana
1/2 cup almond butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp almond extract
1-2 tbsp cinnamon
5 dates
Water

The only difference in method here is I quickly made up a little date syrup by mashing some pitted dates with some water for 5 minutes and drizzling this over the oaty mixture before toasting it. I would have properly made date syrup the night before if I had planned ahead, but I didn't. It seemed to work OK though, and I will get better at using dates. Also, I used 1/4 cup agave for the oat mixture, and 1/4cup in the banana-nut butter mixture. Unfortunately, as yummy as maple syrup and golden syrup and honey were in the old recipe, I needed to cut the sugar down. I also added some water to the whole mixture before putting in the dish and baking to try to keep the bars a little more moist as they dried out a bit last time. You could use milk (dairy or non) but I didn't have any to hand and water is calorie free I suppose. These bars maybe aren't quite as tasty as they were, but they're a lot healthier and will give you less of a sugar rush, so are probably better...

Jess and Tom today!

So, as we've both been working out pretty hard lately (Tom running millions of miles everyday, Jess complaining about her knee as she runs as far as she can and goes to a million Les Mills classes at the gym every week) and have been finding our diets fairly restrictive when it comes to sports nutrition, we decided to invent a vegan, gluten free, chocolate free protein bar. This is kind of 2 recipes in one, as we decided to play around with carob too. The protein bars are a take on our monkey bars which, if you've tried them, are just the best. I know a lot of protein bar recipes are raw but these baked ones are so good.

Carob

1 tablespoon vegan spread (we used sunflower, most recipes recommend coconut oil but we didn't have any to hand today)
1/2 cup carob powder
1tsp agave nectar
1tsp vanilla

Melt the fat (whichever you use), stir in carob powder over heat, add a little vanilla and agave to taste. Simple. Then, we poured this onto cling film on a plate, and wrapped it in another layer, and squashed it down nice and flat. Then we stuck it in the fridge/freezer to set.

Protein Bars

2 cups oats
1/2 cup flax seed (absolutely love the Linwoods one with sunflower seeds and goji berries in!)
1/4 cup oat bran
1/2 cup soya protein powder (50 grams)
1/2 cup cashew nuts
1/2 cup raisins
2 tablespoons cinnamon (or 3 or 4....)
2 tablespoons jam (optional but a nice sweet addition)
4 tablespoons maple/golden syrup (this time we used 3 maple to 1 golden but any combination works fine)
1 apple, grated

1/2 cup agave nectar
1 mashed banana
1/2 cup almond butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk (your choice, we used Alpro hazelnut milk)

So, as per the monkey bars, mix the oats, flax, bran, nuts, syrup and cinnamon in a baking dish and toast in the oven at 180C for 10 minutes, stirring halfway. Remove from oven and leave to cool.

Mash banana and add agave and almond butter, cook on the hob until the mixture is runny, remove from heat and add vanilla, salt and a drop of milk. You can also add more cinnamon here. We did.

When cooled, mix the oaty mixture, protein powder and banana-butter mixture. Add a grated apple and raisins (or whatever dried fruit you fancy) to this and add the milk. Mix thoroughly so that the ingredients are all coated and form a slightly doughy consistency. Spread half of this mixture in the bottom of the baking dish you are using, then spread jam on top of this if you are using it, and then we placed our carob flakes (yes, they came out as flakey bits but they taste nice anyway) on top of the jam. Then add the rest of the mixture and press down so that it is compact and neat. Then bake for 18-20 minutes.

And the result is high quality, high protein, vegan, gluten free granola bars. Using the above quantities, made into 14 servings these bars provide approximately 275 calories and 10g protein. So they're perfect to eat before or after a run or session in the gym. And they taste SO good. If you don't want to use soya protein powder, use whichever you prefer. We don't have much experience with protein additions yet so we'll add more recipes as we get more used to using it!

Dark Chocolate and Cranberry Monkey Bars

Group effort today!

We will readily admit we got the idea (and the basic recipe) for this from makeitnaked.com. This blog is fantastic for gluten free recipes and we will sure be trying (and varying) many more of their recipes too. But this is the first one we did. Monkey bars are basically a peanutty cashewy chocolatey bananaey cranberry-y mapley syrupy granola bar. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? Well it is. If you can make these without eating half the mixture before it's made, hats off to you. This recipe is incredible. It's high in protein, so a great one for the gym-goers, and because it's high in energy it works well as a mid afternoon snack to stop you craving a sugar rush (OK, so it's kind of a sugar rush in itself, but it contains healthy stuff too like flax and nuts so it's OK, right?). And you can change it up however you like. This is what we did though...

Ingredients:
2 cups rolled or jumbo oats (gluten free if needed)
1/2 cup cashews
1/4 cup milled flaxseed
1/4 cup oat bran
2tbsp maple syrup
2tbsp golden syrup (you can use 4 tbsp of one of these but we decided to try a bit of both)
1/2 cup peanut butter (we used crunchy)
1/4 cup honey
1 large banana, very ripe and mashed
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
50g dark chocolate chunks, 50g dried cranberries (this bit can be whatever you like!)

Preheat oven to 350C. In a large bowl, mix the oats, oat bran, flax, cashews, cinnamon and syrup so that the mixture is coated. Place in a oven suitable dish and toast in the oven for 10 minutes, turning after five. KEEP CHECKING IT and do not let this mixture burn. Once golden, remove from the oven and let it cool down completely.
Whilst the oats are in the oven, mash the banana and add the peanut butter and honey. Cook this in a pan on medium heat until it becomes a runny mixture, and after about 5 minutes remove from the heat and add the vanilla and salt. Let this mixture cool completely too.
Once cooled (and make sure they are cool, especially if you're using something melty such as chocolate), mix the oat mixture and butter mixture together, and add the chocolate/cranberries/whatever your flavour in here.
Spread the mixture flat in the dish you're using (we found this was enough to fill two pyrex dishes, but the original recipe recommends a 9x5 baking pan) and bake for about 25 minutes, again do not let burn. Once baked, cut into your desired size bar, and there you have it: monkey bars.

I think there are loads of variations that need to be tried with this recipe - try adding the zest of an orange to the buttery mixture, use other berries such as raspberries and blueberries, replace the cranberries with raisins, add some dessicated coconut, grate an apple and add that instead of chocolate...the list is endless. You could also try other nut butters - almond would be lovely - and other nuts such as peanuts, hazelnuts or macadamia (white chocolate macadamia monkey bars anyone?).  Let us know what you think and what works best for you. And don't eat them all as quickly as Jess did :)

Also, when we say cup, don't go on the internet trying to convert cups to grams. Just literally measure everything out using the same cup. A coffee mug is perfect. Cups are actually a really sensible way to keep the proportions right without having to bother with scales, and recipes like this really don't require strict adherence to grams or lbs!