Peanut Butter Cacao Nut and Seed Chewy Bar Food Photo Shoot and Rec...

I love seeds, I always have. My favorite thing about carving pumpkins was roasting the seeds afterwards. On our last market trip, I came home with a lot of seeds and nuts so I decided to make a gluten free nut and seed bar that was naturally sweet, or as much as possible. What I came up with was tasty and intense, I give you Peanut Butter Cacao Nut and Seed Bar.

For about 500 pesos or 25 USD we got: half kilo of almonds, cashews, two different types of pumpkin seeds, a half kilo of sunflower seeds, a quarter kilo of dates, a quarter kilo of dried pineapple.

What I used (This is totally versatile, use what’s available):
pumpkin seeds (2 kinds)

flax seeds

sunflower kernels

cashews

almonds

dates

dried cranberries

ground flax seeds

peanut flour

peanut butter

honey

vanilla

ground cinnamon

cacao nibs

I started by chopping the nuts coarsely and adding them to a large bowl. Then I added a few handfuls of each type of seed and the cranberries too.

Chopped the cacao into small pieces, probably about a handful.

Then add...probably a cup of flax seed meal and stir to combine.

I used three dates although there could have been more. I just took the seed out and chopped them as finely as possible. Then I added them to a cup with probably a half cup of peanut butter, most of a cup of honey and probably about a half a cup of peanut flour.

Combine until smooth, mine looked like this. The little hunks are date bits. So tasty.

Just add the wet stuff to the seeds and nuts and combine. I honestly used my hands to do this, and it worked fairly well.

Once it’s evenly combined, pour it into a pan, a bread loaf pan works PERFECT for this.

Press until it’s a thick even layer and chill for an hour, then slice into bars. I have just been keeping these in the fridge in a container.

So these look super healthy and they are, but they taste good. Think chewy bar meets actually healthy and this is what came out. What I love about recipes like this is that they are so versatile, so you can change anything. If you don’t use honey, agave would do fine here. Any seeds and nuts combination would work. A Mexican would probably like this with some enchiladas nuts mixed in, that is chile seasoned nuts.

I like them as is and I munch them when my energy is waning. I found it to be a good recipe in my search for healthier foods, a great snack to have around for those that like to munch.