good bars
My kids have become addicted to Fiber One chocolate bars. Because they taste amazing, duh, and they do provide fiber but also a lot of corn syrup and other stuff that I'd like to think I can save them from, at least until they’re teenagers when they will probably live on corn syrup... and McDonald's chicken nuggets.
Anyway, this story starts with a sale at CVS. Pitted dates were half off so I grabbed a bag vaguely recalling some recipe for energy-date bars.
I have a hard time bookmarking recipes—we have two computers at home and I always forget which one I bookmarked and where and in what file folder...I sound like I’m 82. So I just googled a recipe for snack bars for kids with dates and found this one and just made it immediately without much further research because I knew if I didn’t pull out the Cuisinart that moment I would never ever do it ever again. (#failedbaker)
The bars turned out ok—a little dense and oily but tasty. I was pretty sure my kids wouldn't like them so I called them “chocolate peanut bars." (My chocolate peanut butter balls were a minor success.) As it turns out both kids tasted them and said the same thing: "good" in that way they say "good" when I ask them how school was.
But then I thought: I get the concept: dried fruit and nuts and/or seeds blended, panned and chilled. Of course, theKithchn figured this out in 2012 but since I'd already trashed the kitchen, I decided to improvise another one.
It was also a good opportunity to use all the stuff I bought when I thought I might be a healthy baker (#failedbaker): flax meal, soynut butter, cocoa nibs, cocoa powder, molasses. Blend! The texture was right on but it had sort of a bitter taste and I wound up throwing them out.
I think the moral is: stick with kid friendly ingredients. And, when baking, recipes. The "chocolate peanut bars" are still in the fridge and from time to time I offer them as snacks or special treats but no one seems particularly thrilled to take me up on it. They are not nearly as yummy as Fiber One bars.