Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Energy Bars
This may come as a surprise to some, but it’s actually pretty difficult to try to get a food blog up and running when there’s a pandemic happening in the world. I haven’t been to any kind of grocery store in over two weeks and I don’t see that changing any time soon. So for the foreseeable future, what you’ll be finding on the blog is recipes that I’m making from ingredients that I have entirely on hand! They’ll be simple, tasty, and enough to feed a crowd. I guess when I describe it like that it sounds like things won’t change much, because that’s the look I’m going for most of the time anyway.
But MAN do I miss vegetables. We have a fair amount of frozen vegetables (I always like to keep frozen broccoli on hand and we also have some frozen peas and frozen kale) thankfully but I miss salad greens and mini cucumbers! Pre-quarantine I was spending at least $10 a week on organic mini cucumbers. I eat at least two a day at lunch normally plus more at night in my salads. I don’t know why I’m obsessed with cucumbers but I just am.
If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen me mention that we are not allowed access to the break room at work at all (meaning the refrigerator or the microwave) because of the virus. Seems pretty lame to me, but it’s what management decided to do. So the past few weeks I’ve been bringing the oddest things to work to eat at lunch. This week I roasted green beans and chicken sausage on a sheet pan and called it lunch. I have a delicious idea for next week involving salsa, ranch dressing, some sort of taco flavored protein, and rice. I’m already excited to eat that one.
The next couple of days I’m excited that these energy bars will be making an appearance at lunch! I’m a chocolate fan 100% of the time, so these treats will make my day and keep me from being hangry in the afternoons at work. Hopefully for everyone’s sake (okay, mostly my coworkers) we can get over this and get back to normal before long! Until then, I’ll be the one eating chocolate 24/7.
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Line a 9" x 5" loaf pan with parchment paper.
- Combine all of the ingredients (see Note) except for the chocolate chips into a food processor. Turn on and process until combined completely. Fold in the chocolate chips and stir to incorporate evenly throughout.
- Use a spatula to spread the batter out into the parchment paper lined loaf pan. Use your hands to press the batter down so that the thickness is as uniform as possible. Let set in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes. When hardened, remove batter from loaf pan by lifting the parchment paper and placing it on a cutting board. Use a large knife to cut evenly into six bars (your knife blade should be parallel with the 5" width). Store in the refrigerator until ready to consume. Enjoy!
