Gluten Free Cacao Nib Peanut Butter Chewy Bars Food Photo Shoot and Recipe

 I love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate and this recipe has been in my rotation for years at this point, although it’s honestly been a few years since I made it.  I found it in an attempt to make home made chewy bars.  While this isn’t quite what a chewy bar is, it is pretty addictive.  I used to make it with chocolate chips and I’m sure I will again, but today I substituted for raw cacao beans instead of chocolate.    
 

The result was magical, a nice crunch with a sweet taste from the bar itself.  It made it taste almost like a dark chocolate Reeses cup, if Reeses used honey flavored peanut butter. These bars are best when chilled and set, but sometimes life demands you lose your patience and eat the granola bars.  Today was one of those days and it was very worth it.
 So what do you need?  

2 cups regular rolled oats

1 cup quinoa oats ¾ cup white sugar

½ cup brown sugar ½ cup honey 

¾ cup peanut butter 

½ cup butter 

1 t vanilla 

3 T hemp protein 

3 T ground flax 

1-1.5 cup chopped cacao nibs 

Cream the sugars, honey, peanut butter, butter and vanilla together until they make a thick paste.  Add the hemp protein, flax meal and oats and mix until combined.

It should look something like this.    

Chop up a quarter of the cacao nibs and mix them in.  Butter a 9x13 pan on all sides and press the mixture into the pan evenly. I bake it at about 375 for 20 minutes until the edges are lightly golden brown. 

It should be slightly golden around the edges, just baked enough to make everything melt together in the right way. 

 I chopped the nibs into tiny pieces and sprinkled them across the top.  After deciding that they would stay better with a glaze,  I made a simple one. 

Just a few tablespoons of plain yogurt, a teaspoon of peanut butter and some vanilla with half a cup to a cup of powdered sugar.  I used a little almond milk to even the texture.  After pouring it into a plastic bag and cutting off the corner, I drizzled the glaze and allowed it to set.

It looked something like this by the end of it, absolute heaven.  I allowed it to cool just a little more before digging in. 

These are awesome, almost like dark chocolate crunchy version of what I used to make.  I used the majority of the cacao nibs at the end to preserve the nutrients and keep them raw, to explain why they were put on as a topping.  With the aid of the glaze they stayed on better than expected and were a necessary balancing agent for these sweet granola bars.

Don’t those look amazing? Finally a non-smoothie use for cacao nibs.  Stay tuned as I test recipes for cookies and all sorts of other delicious ideas I’ve got planned for nibs.    
 

They’re sweet with bitter tones, not the healthiest granola bar but certainly MILES better than the storebought edition. They tend to crumble in warm temperatures but I prefer them for the versatility and the comfort of knowing what is in them, even if it’s not the best for me in the case of the sugar.  This recipe can be adjusted to be paleo as well as gluten free, although I didn’t do that myself.   
 

Thanks for following and supporting us, until next time.