(No)Bake Your Own Protein Bar
Protein bars are an integral part of life for any athlete, and more and more for regular people. Protein is critical to staying lean, energized, and healthy. But commercial protein bars can be as bad for you as candy bars, and filled with all sorts of crazy stuff. I found these Pure Power bars I like from Dr. Mercola, but they’re rice protein and peanut butter, which is not always ideal depending on what my training goals are at a given time.
So when my HOT bikini-competitor-lean-lifestyle-promoting friend Jess posted her recipe for protein snack bars, I was excited to give them a spin. In typical me fashion, though, I deviated completely from her recipe, which you can (and should) check out here: pumpnshredlife.com: convenient and fat-loss friendly protein snack bars.
No-Bake Protein Bars
Ingredients
- 4 scoops (about 1 cup) Vanilla whey protein powder (I used Reserveage because it was leftover, but I’m beginning to think it is for whatever reason the best for protein “baking”; generally speaking my fave protein is Stronger Faster Healthier)
- 1/4 tsp sea salt
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1 cup (or slightly less) peanut butter (mine had chia and flax mixed in it too—yum!)
- 1/4ish cup of honey
- 1/4ish cup of Trader Joe’s steel cut instant oatmeal
- 1/3 cup chopped Guittard milk chocolate chips (I’m a glutton)
- splash cold coffee
Directions
- Stir together oats, protein powder, sea salt and cinnamon.
- Stir in peanut butter and honey. Mixture will be rather thick and dry.
- Add in your splash of liquid, if necessary.
- Stir in chocolate chips (or raw cacao nibs if you’re being all healthy).
- Press the mixture into a 9×9 pan (you could line it with wax or parchment paper).
- Place in freezer for about 10 minutes for bars to harden up. Remove and cut into 8 bars.
- Wrap each bar individually in plastic wrap and store in the freezer.
These bars will have 10+ grams protein each, and around 200 calories depending on what you put in there.
MyFitnessPal is an excellent app for tracking the calories in homemade recipes (and for food logging, if you’re into that sort of thing).
I tried a similar recipe later with almond butter, SFH protein powder, water, no oats, and mixing it in the VitaMix. The bars were not nearly as good. I obviously did a terrible job isolating variables, but my guess is that the hand mixing is better than VitaMixing, water is not delicious and I might have used too much of it, and the oats are helpful to dilute the whey protein flavor. BUT that’s that genius of Jess’ original recipe: you can play around with it for your tastes and nutritional needs.
Perfect on-the-go snack, breakfast, post-workout bar … any time really.