FITNESS REVIEWS AND IMAGES: White Chocolate Almond Protein Bars

Wednesday 17 September 2014

White Chocolate Almond Protein Bars

New Exercise and Fitness Review

If you make your own protein bars, chances are that most of them look pretty much the same—at least on the outside. Once prepped, blended, and baked, protein bars tend to look like dark chocolate rectangles—or if you don’t give them proper angles, dark chocolate sausages. So why do you keep cooking up a protein-packed storm if the outcome is less than visually pleasing? Because, in the end, taste triumphs and pure protein deliciousness is all that matters!

That being said, it’s nice to sometimes play around with aesthetics—to make the kind of bar that, if eaten in the presence of others, makes them stop in their tracks, stare with desire, and utter, “Err, sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if I could try one of those, um, bars.”

You eat with your eyes first, after all, and there’s a lot you can do to make your bars look irresistible. You can top them with fruit, add a layer of “caramel,” or throw on your own mixture of marshmallows, seeds, fruits, and nuts. You can also coat your bars in sugar-free white chocolate and give them zebra-like dark chocolate stripes, like I did for these bars.

WHITE CHOCOLATE ALMOND PROTEIN BARS

1/4 cup vanilla whey protein powder

1/4 cup almond milk

2 tbsp coconut flour

2 tbsp chopped almonds (or chopped mixed nuts)

3 tbsp ground almonds

1/2 tsp vanilla pods or essence (optional, but lovely!)

1/2 bar sugar-free white chocolate (or dark chocolate)

1 square dark chocolate (optional)

1 tsp extra nuts (optional)

In a bowl, mix together all of your filling ingredients. Mix until you get a dough that’s the right consistency—you should be able to mold it with your hands. If your mixture is too wet to allow you to mold it, add a bit more ground almonds until it becomes more solid.

Shape four small bars (or rectangles) out of your mix. Place them on a tray lined with baking paper.

Melt the white chocolate in a bain marie (a glass bowl on top of a pot of boiling water). If your chocolate is sticking too much and isn’t melting properly, add a tiny bit of coconut oil to help it along.

Once your chocolate has melted, pour some of it on top of the bars. Then turn them around and pour more of the chocolate on the other side.

To decorate the bars, you can add a few layers of melted dark chocolate and more chopped nuts. Use your imagination. You can make some zebra-striped bars like I did, or let your imagination run wild.

White Chocolate Almond Protein Bars PDF (152 KB)

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size (1 bar) Recipe yields 4

Amount per serving

Calories 168

Total Fat10 g

Total Carbs10 g (3 g fiber)

Protein9 g

Note: If you want to drop the fat content, use dark chocolate instead of white chocolate. But be sure to at least consider using the white chocolate to coat your protein bars. You owe it to yourself to experience their pure deliciousness, even if it’s only once.