Bar none

Homemade grab-and-go snacks are better for you — no matter the craving or need

Peanut Snack Bars (top); Chewy Cranberry, Millet and Pistachio Bars (center); and Banana Breakfast Bars (bottom) are easy to make at home and more nutritious than the store-bought variety.
Peanut Snack Bars (top); Chewy Cranberry, Millet and Pistachio Bars (center); and Banana Breakfast Bars (bottom) are easy to make at home and more nutritious than the store-bought variety.

Energy bars, power bars, protein bars, granola bars. Whatever you call them, they've taken over entire aisles in supermarkets. When it comes to nutrition, some of them are little better for you than a store-bought cookie, with an ingredient list that would make a Keebler elf blanch. That's changing, as more brands realize that plenty of consumers interested in grab-and-go snacking also want something more stripped-down. One manufacturer, That's It, is selling bars made from just two dried fruits, nothing more.

Their ubiquity might make you forget one salient fact: It's so easy to make these things at home, where you can control the ingredients, mix and match to your liking and store them for a week, ready for whenever you have a hankering.

It seems just about every whole- foods-oriented cookbook released in the past year or so has included a bar, so we've been trying recipes and returning to the best ones. In the process, we've settled on three standbys, each of which occupies a niche and satisfies a particular craving or need.

The standout bars are variations on a common theme: grains, nuts and/or fruit bound together with something sticky, with minimal (if any) added sweetener. The most stripped-down are Susanna Booth's Peanut Snack Bars in her Sensationally Sugar Free (Hamlyn, 2016), which live up to the promise of the book's title. They're barely more than figs, nuts and seeds, with a little peanut butter and a little flour, and they come together as easily as a food-processor pie dough, albeit one that you cut into bars -- and don't bake.

The Chewy Cranberry, Millet and Pistachio Bars in Emma Galloway's delightful My Darling Lemon Thyme (Roost Books, 2015) don't see the heat of an oven, either. But you do quickly boil the liquid ingredients -- brown rice syrup or honey, coconut oil and tahini -- before pouring the combination over a bowl full of puffed millet, dried cranberries and pistachios. Puffed millet was a revelation: a health-food-store staple that turns a whole grain from something hearty into something light and crispy. Between the millet and the tahini, that Middle Eastern paste made from ground sesame seeds, these bars taste like an adult's version of Rice Krispies Treats.

Ella Woodward's Banana Breakfast Bars are a little cakier, and prepared more conventionally: You mash up ripe bananas and mix them with oats, almond milk, a little cashew butter, honey and seasoning, then bake them briefly. They're like a cross between a muffin and a granola bar, just the type of thing that you'd grab for a quick morning snack. Spread with more nut butter and some jam, eat with yogurt and fruit, and you're on your way to a meal. You'd probably want to sit down for this one, but it'll be worth it. Even a power-bar-maker deserves to power down now and again.

These somewhat cakey, somewhat chewy bars have a subtle banana flavor that makes them perfect for a grab-and-go breakfast.

Make ahead: The bars can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Banana Breakfast Bars

Coconut oil or spray oil, for the baking dish

1 cup sliced very ripe bananas

2 1/2 cups rolled oats

Scant 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk

2 tablespoons cashew butter

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease a 9-by-6-inch baking dish.

Use a fork to mash the bananas in a mixing bowl until smooth. Stir in the rolled oats, almond milk, cashew butter, cinnamon, honey, vanilla extract and salt until well incorporated.

Spoon the mixture into the baking dish, flattening and smoothing the surface. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until evenly firm to the touch.

Cool in the baking dish completely before cutting into 10 bars of equal size.

Makes 10 bars.

Nutrition information: Each bar contains 130 calories, 3 g protein, 5 g fat, 21 g carbohydrate (4 g sugar), no cholesterol, 55 mg sodium and 3 g fiber.

Recipe adapted from Deliciously Ella Every Day by Ella Woodward (Scribner, 2016)

These energy bars taste like Rice Krispies Treats for adults. They're chewy, sticky, salty, nutty and only slightly sweet, and they contain whole grains.

Look for puffed millet in health-food stores or in the gluten-free aisle of well-stocked supermarkets.

Make ahead: The bars can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Chewy Cranberry, Millet and Pistachio Bars

Spray oil, for greasing pan

2 1/2 cups puffed millet (may substitute puffed rice)

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup shelled raw, unsalted pistachios, chopped

1/2 cup brown rice syrup OR 1/3 cup honey

1/2 cup tahini

3 tablespoons coconut oil

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Coat a 7-by-11-inch baking pan with cooking oil spray, then line it with parchment paper.

Combine the millet, cranberries and pistachios in a heat-safe mixing bowl, stirring to incorporate.

Combine the brown rice syrup or honey, tahini, coconut oil and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat; once the mixture starts to bubble around the edges, start stirring to prevent sticking. Cook 45 seconds, then remove from heat.

Quickly stir in the vanilla extract, then pour the syrup mixture over the millet mixture.

Mix well and then transfer to the pan, pressing down evenly with the back of an oiled spoon to compact the mixture. Let cool, then cover and refrigerate 1 to 2 hours or until set before using a lightly oiled knife to cut the slab into 14 equal bars.

Makes 14 bars.

Nutrition information: Each bar (prepared with brown rice syrup) contains approximately 150 calories, 3 g protein, 8 g fat, 18 g carbohydrate (10 g sugar), no cholesterol, 75 mg sodium and 1 g fiber.

Recipe adapted from My Darling Lemon Thyme by Emma Galloway

These are trail mix in a bar: little more than nuts, seeds and dried fruit bound together with a little flour.

Make ahead: The bars can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Peanut Snack Bars

7 ounces dried figs (about 1 cup packed)

Scant 1/2 cup unsweetened crunchy peanut butter

1/4 cup hulled, toasted or roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds

1/3 cup hulled, raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds

1/3 cup whole-wheat flour

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons sunflower oil

2 teaspoons water

Discard the tough stem at the top of each dried fig. Place the fruit in a food processor along with the peanut butter, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flour, salt, sunflower oil and water; pulse long enough to create a mixture that has the texture of fine crumbs, which should hold together when firmly pressed.

Press or roll the mixture on a counter, between layers of parchment paper, to a thickness of about 1/2 inch. A rectangle about 7 by 6 inches is perfect. If there are cracks, press the dough more firmly. Cut into 12 equal slices.

Makes 12 bars.

Nutrition information: Each bar contains approximately 180 calories, 5 g protein, 11 g fat, 16 g carbohydrate (8 g sugar), no cholesterol, 80 mg sodium and 3 g fiber.

Recipe adapted from Sensationally Sugar Free by Susanna Booth (Hamlyn, 2016)

Food on 06/01/2016

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