Monday 25 November 2013

Healthy peanut butter chocolate bars

This post falls under the "and stuff" of Skates and Stuff.  I love baking and desserts but sometimes it can be hard to make some healthy-ish options.

I was sitting at home taking an extra afternoon off to recover while the rest of my group was training and was really in need of some comfort food.  I found this recipe online, experimented with it a little and was really happy with how it turned out.  So I'll tell ya what I did and leave the recipe at the bottom.

The original recipe called for half a cup of brown sugar but I only used a quarter cup and mixed it with 1 cup of peanut butter, 2 teaspoons of vanilla and then on a whim I decided to add half a banana.  The banana was a little hard to mix in but I figured that no one would really complain if they got a chunk of banana in their bar.
This smelled so good I could have stopped there and just licked the bowl
Next up was one cup of flour (whole wheat because that's how stupidly healthy I am), a cup of oats, a teaspoon of baking soda, and a quarter of a teaspoon of salt (I don't know if it makes any difference at all but I use sea salt).

It was all a little crumbly until I added the milk.  I used half a cup of chocolate almond milk instead of regular milk (and that also accounted for some of the sugar I left out).  I put in half a cup of chocolate chips but you could also put in raisins or nuts or whatever else. 
Yum
I pressed it all in a greased pan and put it in the oven for about 17 minutes. 
The finished product was almost suprising to me since I had never experimented on a recipe that much.  The bars are kind of somewhere between a banana bread and an oatmeal cookie, they're soft in the middle which probably comes from the banana.
They're a little bit healthier but still good.  I ate three that first day.

Recipe:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter (all natural)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 banana 
1 cup flour (I used whole wheat)
1 cup oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt 
1/2 cup milk (I used chocolate almond milk)
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350F
Mix brown sugar, peanut butter and vanilla 
Add the banana 
Mix in flour, oats, salt and baking soda. Slowly add milk and then chocolate chips (may need to use your hands to mix it all together)
Press into a greased baking pan and bake for 17-20 minutes, or until the bars start to brown around the edges 

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