Chocolate Coconut Chew Bars

We only just recently discovered Larabar's. Those bars are so delicious and naturally made that we fell instantly in love. But being that we love to make everything by hand and the ingredients lists were so natural we decided to try making our own version. C, our main cook in the house, got cracking on making our versions have less carbs and be just as tasty. They turned out amazing! He's also made Cashew bars and Apricot Walnut bars. They are all so good! Today I'm going to share his Chocolate Coconut Chew recipe and how he makes them. These are definitely our favorites so far. I mean, cocoa + coconut + almonds, how can it be wrong! These are gluten-free, no sugar added and naturally raw.

Ingredients:
10 oz. unsweetened dried dates
1/4 c. coconut oil
6 oz. unsweetened shredded coconut (if you prefer less coconut texture you can chop half or all of the coconut in the food processor. We do half chopped and half as-is.)
4 oz. raw almonds, chopped
4 oz. raw walnuts, chopped
1 c. cocoa powder

Mix the dates and coconut oil in the food processor. You want it to chop up the dates and blend the coconut oil well. When it's finely ground it will start to clump together.

Dump the mixed dates and coconut oil  into a decent sized bowl. Add the chopped almonds, walnuts, coconut and cocoa powder. Now it's time to get your hands dirty. With clean hands start blending the ingredients together, making sure there aren't a lot of large clumps. You want everything to be well mixed. It will be loose but ingredients distributed. 

You could also try this in a mixer, but doing it by hand is pretty simple and less equipment to clean afterwards.

 This is what it should look like after you blend with your hands.

  Pour the mix onto a cutting board and compress into a mound to give you a good starting point to roll it out. Using a dough scraper you can keep edges compressed and tidy while forming the mound.

 Start rolling out from side to side and top to bottom to keep it even. Using the dough scraper to keep crumbling edges together. It's a lot of tidying edges and then rolling. 

 When you are done you should have a rectangle like this. This is about 1/2" thick. You can always do it thicker if you prefer that for your bars.

Then begin cutting into bars.  For the recipe in this post we are making 16 bars.

 

 Once bars are cut you can put them in a air-tight container to store in the fridge. Some will be a little fragile at this stage. After an hour in the fridge they will firm up and be ready to handle and EAT!

I couldn't wait and had to have a nibble when taking this picture. So nice to get a little chocolate fix and know it's not just a sugary, over processed food. Enjoy and feel satisfied!

Serving size: 1 bar, 246 calories, 19g fat, 14g carbs, 6g fiber, 5g protein.

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