I really love to eat Lara Bars and thought it would be fun to try and make some myself. But since I like to soak and sprout nuts, these cherry pie fruit and nut bars that I made are a little different in texture. If you wanted to make them more like the one you can buy, just don’t soak any ingredients. You could also use raw almond butter too, and mix it with the fruit in a food processor.
For my bars I used dried cherries, raw almonds, raw sunflower seeds, and dates. I think it was about 1 unit of almonds, 1.5 units of cherries, .5 units of sunflower seeds, and .5 -.75 units of dates. So, not as sweet as a the Lara Bar, which lists dates as the first ingredient. I used my Champion juicer and my Excalibur dehydrator.
First I soaked the cherries, nuts and seeds overnight. The cherries were pretty hard. I poured off the water. I had some to cherry nut water to drink and it was good!
Then, I added the dates and mixed it all up.
I put the ‘blank screen’ in the juicer so everything put into it comes out the pulp shoot and made the mixture into cherry date almond sun butter which tasted so amazing!
Looks pretty gross but it would have made a great spread in this form.
I had to dehydrate it because I soaked it, so it would keep better. If you chose not to soak it, I think it would form into bars really well, but this method left it a little too buttery. to me the health benefits of soaking are worth the extra steps.
I squished it into the screen covered with the Teflex sheet and scored it into bars with a butter knife. When it held it’s shape, I flipped it onto a screen with out the Teflex.
Then, later, I separated them onto several screens to dry better. I took a long time for them to get to a chewy consistency.
I put one batch in the fridge and one in the freezer and now its ready for my next snack time, hike or backpacking trip.
stigmastylepistil 