Date Bars

There are many jokes to be made out of the phrase "date bars."

Ex1:
"I'm going home to make date bars tonight."
"You're going to what?
and
Ex2:
"I'm going home to make date bars tonight."
"You've been doing that a lot lately. It must be working out well for you."
and
Ex3:
"I'm going home to make date bars tonight."
"What? You're going to bars to find dates and make out?"

Those are just a few examples. I am sure you can only imagine the other possibilities. However, "I'm going home to make date bars" has fallen from my lips several times this last week, and today I succeeded. I love Larabars - an energy-type delicious bar wrapped in clever packaging - and every Larabar usually only has 2-5 ingredients. I decided I wanted to try my hand at making them when it became impossible for me to eat less than one a day.

So off I went to Wal-Mart to find dates, almonds, and coconut. Mmmm, coconut. Then, the experiments began. My friend Bethany suggested I boil the dates so as to make them a stickier binding agent. Then I chopped up the almonds and coconut in a food processor. I combined the boiled dates with the dry ingredients (including a dash of cinnamon) and food-processed it more.

I then tried several different baking methods at varying temperatures and times. I finally settled on the following method:

Grease cookie tray
Roll mixture into little balls
Place on try
Press flat with bottom of cup (to 1/2 inch thick or so)
Bake at 315 for 30 minutes
Eat

I am so excited that I unlocked the secret to my own Larabar version. In fact, I believe the Larabar company must dehydrate or otherwise slowly cook the bars because they do not have the baked texture, making my little cakes totally original.

I shall call them:

Noellabars

Ingredients: Dates, Almonds, Coconut, Cinammon, Elbow Grease, Ingenuity, Love

200 Calories of
non-gluten, anti-processed sugar, dairy-free, potato-free, corn/corn-syrup/other-corn-derivatives-free, legume-free
BLISS