Homemade Fruit, Nut, and Seed Bars

Healthy homemade bars are really easy to make if you have a food processor although I'm guessing they could also be made with a blender or even by hand if you want.  With home made bars, there are no unknown ingredients, and I assume, they are cheaper.

Here's a recent batch I made. You can mix and match any kind of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds that you want of course.  This time I weighed everything because I wanted to get a rough idea of how many calories were in each bar.  This picture only shows 1 oz each of dates and prunes. I added another oz of each because the mixture was a bit too dry.



 

Ingredients

2 oz dried dates
2 oz dried prunes
1 oz dried apricots
1/2 oz raisins
1/2 oz dried cranberries
1/2 oz walnuts
1/2 oz almonds
1/2 oz sunflowers seeds (I used toasted)


Throw all of this into a food processor and whir for a few minutes until the mixtures looks like this. Test the consistency to see if it holds together easily. Add in more dried fruit if it's too dry.

I divided this batch into 5 equal piles, using my small kitchen scale (45 grams or 1 1/2 ozs per bar), again, because I wanted fairly accurate calorie count this time.  Form the mixtures into bars (or balls or whatever).  Wrap each in plastic wrap.  Store in cupboard or fridge  - I don't think it matters.

Makes 5 bars

150 calories each

Carbs - 27 grams
Fat - 5 grams
Protein - 2.4 grams

(Nutrient info is approximate. Analysis based on data from http://sparkpeople.com)