{"id":15176,"date":"2011-08-30T12:12:08","date_gmt":"2011-08-30T16:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/?p=15176"},"modified":"2020-04-29T11:22:03","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T15:22:03","slug":"homemade-energy-bar-recipe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/homemade-energy-bar-recipe\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ultimate Energy Bar Formula"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recipes are great.  But formulas <\/em>are where it’s at.<\/p>\n

Recipes allow even brand new cooks to produce something that’s really good, or at least something that doesn’t entirely suck. You can take a recipe that an expert chef created and reproduce in your home exactly the same dish, without the years of training. Score.<\/p>\n

The problem with recipes, though, is that it’s easy to rely on them too much, especially if you’re like me and you’re scared to mess with them.  Eventually, you find yourself stuck in a box, where you eat the same thing over and over and never venture beyond the safe comfort of your trusty recipes.<\/p>\n

This was my problem with smoothies for a long time: I’d find a recipe for one I liked<\/a>, make it every day for a month, and then get so sick of it that one day I’d simply revolt.<\/p>\n

Skip the smoothie. Go to Starbucks. Coffee<\/a> and a bagel. Not a good start to the day.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I stepped back from the “month of smoothies, month of Starbucks” routine. I figured out what the smoothies I liked all had in common, and came up with the Perfect Smoothie Formula<\/a>. This way I could switch in different ingredients and never run out of smoothie ideas or get sick of the same one over and over.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First smoothies, now energy bars<\/h2>\n

My wife and I had the same problem with my sister Christine’s homemade energy bar recipe<\/a>, part of the Sweet Tooth Friday<\/a> series she used to write for No Meat Athlete before she got fired<\/del> law school intervened. We used to make these energy bars all the time (and in bulk for bringing on road trips), and they’ve earned themselves more than a few fans among NMA readers too.<\/p>\n

And if you remember Christine’s Sweet Tooth Friday posts, you know that she’s got a talent for sneaking beans and other seemingly-gross stuff into bars and desserts to make them really healthy and still taste good (remember black bean brownies<\/a>?). Her energy bars are no different — delicious and wholesome, and even packing a decent amount of protein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So it’s a great recipe. But unfortunately, you can only eat the same energy bar so many times before it makes you want to ralph.<\/p>\n

And so I asked Christine to take a break from law school to help me out. (I was thinking a whole semester, but she knocked it out in a day.)<\/p>\n

This energy bar formula is what she created, and it’s fantastic. In the basic recipe below, Christine lists the amounts of each type of ingredient. Then underneath that, she suggests several ingredients of each type, which you can mix and match to come up with your own energy bars (and feel free to try others). Finally, she gives a few examples of bars she’s made, to give you a few ideas.<\/p>\n

The Ultimate Energy Bar Formula<\/h2>\n
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