Nutri-grain bars (vegan)

I made these a while ago but haven’t gotten around to writing up the post for it because I’ve been working on my June “clean eats” recipe month posts instead. I’ve always been a fan of nutri-grain bars growing up because they were sweet enough to be a convincing replacement for candy bars. In hindsight, they weren’t the healthiest of all snacks since they were jam packed in sugar (even if some of it was from fruit). Anyways since I’ve been on the go lately had rarely ever have the time to whip up a snack at home, I decided to just make a batch of these oh so nostalgic nutrigrain bars from my childhood to take along with me as on the go snacks!

Ingredients:

2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons ground flax seeds (or 2 eggs)
1/3 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk of choice
2 tablespoons applesauce (or oil)

1 tablespoon honey/agave
1 1/2 cup dried fruit of choice
1 tablespoon water

Baking time!

1.  Sift the whole wheat flour, baking powder and cinnamon in a bowl.

2. Add in the flax egg, coconut oil, vanilla, milk and apple sauce/oil.

3. Stir everything together until a dough comes together and then let it firm up in the fridge for 30 minutes. While the dough is firming up in the fridge, blend your dried fruit, honey and water in a blender until it creates a paste.

4. Roll out your dough into a rectangle.

5. Cover half your dough with your dried fruit filling mixture.

6. Fold uncovered side over the filling and pinch the sides to seal everything up

7. Cut the dough into 2″ x 2″ squares and bake at 350F for 15 – 20 minutes until golden brown on the bottom.

8. Munch!

These nutrigrain copycat bars were definitely not as sweet as the store bought ones because I used lots of natural sugar in it instead but they were pretty close in terms of texture and taste otherwise. I decided to use blended dried fruits for the filling instead of jam like the ones from the store because I thought that they would be less messy that way and I wasn’t sure if the jam would set the same way upon baking.

Tags: Apricot, Baking, Bars, Fruit, nutri-grain, Recipe, Vegan