For those of you that have hopped on the healthy breakfast bandwagon, Lara Bars might be a familiar friend sometimes found mushed at the bottom of your train bag, all wrinkly and soft, but still remarkably delicious...especially for something made from mushy dates.
I like Lara Bars (which even surprised me, really). And they stick to that whole 'I can pronounce and would recognize on sight all of the ingredients in this food item' Which seems to be a rarity when one contemplates breakfast on the go. Things between Lara and I are fine...except for the fact that our local grocery store keeps them up on the highest shelf, psuedo-hidden, and prices them out at ten dollars a box. So while standing in front of the shelf at the grocery store last week wondering why these things are two dollars each I did what any other twenty something with instant and continuous access to the internet would do. I looked up a recipe, bought a bag of dates and went home to wing it.
Its taken a couple tries (all of them delicious, some just too sticky) but Ive got the whole thing down to a fairly manageable routine that I can complete on Sunday in order to have carrot cake flavored goodness all week long. If you have a food dehydrator this process will be even easier. I do not have room in my very small cabinets for such a uni-tasker, but the oven has served me pretty well.
You begin be shredding carrots and pineapple and drying them in a two hundred degree oven for 2 hours, you should have about 1 3/4 cups of this shredded mix, to dump into the food processor along with 2 cups of pitted dates (I found mine in the raisin section of our grocery store) and 1 1/2 cups of raw almonds. this spins around the food processor until it begins to stick together (don't over blend or you'll get carrot cake flavored paste) add in 1/4 cup of shredded unsweetened coconut and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger, and 1/8 teaspoon of ground cloves. Turn the processor on to mix the whole thing together, and then dump out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, from here you can press into bars, or scoop and smoosh into little 'cookies' which is my preference.
