Vegan Larabar Style Brownies

I’ve perfected these Vegan Larabar Style Brownies! You may be asking yourself “How could her amazing brownies get any better?!” Well, peanut butter of course! 😉 Who doesn’t love peanut butter?

My kiddos love these, I love these, and the biggest test I could pass is that my husband loves these! He says so every time he eats them “These are SO good!”

It’s hard to believe that these yummy “brownies” are sweetened with dates! They have zero added sugar, they are also gluten free, and grain free, but definitely not taste free! If you love chocolate and you love peanutbutter, these are the “brownies” for you! Are you sold yet?

So, why do I keep putting quotes around the word brownies? Now that I’ve sold you on the taste, let me make it clear that these are not your typical cake like brownies. Have you ever had a Larabar or an Rx Bar? They are more of that chewy consistency (but not quite so chewy). They are super inexpensive to make though, and I love that I know exactly what quality ingredients are going into them so I feel good about giving them to my family.

I have been known to buy Larabars for their wonderful shelf life and limited ingredients for things like road trips and play dates. However, these brownie bars are perfect for at home snacks, grab and go picnic and school lunches (when you put them in individual baggies like I do), or for taking to a party as a healthier treat to share!

I have posted how to make Larabar Style Brownies in the past but I have since tweeked the recipe. I rarely use the same recipe when I make sweets and meals so I wanted to share my latest improved recipe!

While these brownie bars are totally vegan, I do have an option to add Great Lakes Collagen if you are not going the vegan route and would like to up your protein as well as benefit from all that collagen has to offer. You can read more about collagen by clicking here. I found Great Lakes Collagen to be the cheapest through Thrive Market, but they also sell it on Amazon…. what don’t they sell on Amazon?

So without any more ramblings, here is how I make Vegan Larabar Style Brownies:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups walnuts
• 1 cup cashews
• ¼ cup pumpkin seeds
• ¼ cup chia seeds
• 4 TBS organic peanut butter (no oils added)
• ¼ cup plus 2 TBS raw cacao powder
• about 14 medjool dates (2 cups worth)
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract (with no added HFCS)
• dash sea salt We buy our Redmonds Real Sea Salt from Thrive Market
• dash ceylon cinnamon
• 1-2 TBS water as needed
• Non vegan optional additional ingredient: 3 TBS Great Lakes Collagen ( you can add more if you like but the macros listed below are for 3 TBS)

Directions:

1. Put all the nuts and seeds into a food processor and process until the nuts and seeds are smooth (not quite to a nut butter but not too grainy either).
2. Add the dates to the processor (you may need to soak your dates in warm water ahead of time if they have become hard) and process until completely blended.
3. Add cacao powder, vanilla extract, sea salt, cinnamon, and collagen (if making the higher protein non vegan option) to your processor and process until everything is thoroughly blended.
4. At this point you will want to process your mixture until it is nice and smooth (not sandy or dry). If you find that your mixture is dry you can add 1-3 TBS of water as you continue to process and mix your mixture. I find that if I add collagen I need to add more water. I add a little at a time so that I don’t over do it on the water.
5. Prepare a 8 inch square glass Pyrex container by lining it with parchment paper. You don’t HAVE to line it with paper but I love doing this so I can lift the brownies out easily and cut them evenly once they have “set”.
   Once your mixture is nice and smooth and sticky scoop it out onto the parchment paper lined glass Pyrex container. Smooth it out somewhat evenly with your spoon. I like to use another flat piece of parchment paper to press down evenly over my mixture and get the top of the brownies nice and flat and even.
6. At this point there may be excess liquid on top of the brownies. My daughter says that part tastes like caramel (it’s super sweet and gooey) but if you are grossed out by it or want the brownies to be less “slimy” you can soak up the liquid with a paper towel or scape it off with a knife after they have been in the freezer for a little bit.
7. Place in the freezer for at least an hour or up to 3 hours to “set”. This helps everything kind of harden and easier to cut without coming apart.
   After an hour or so in the freezer lift your mixture out of the container, place onto a cutting board and cut into 16 even squares. I like to then cut those squares in half so that each serving has 2 mini brownies. I figured out the macros below for each serving (1/16 OR 2 smaller brownies if you cut them into 32 pieces).
8. Now you can either place the cut brownie bars back into the original container OR divide them up into little snack bags into individual portioned sizes. I like to divide them up if I am not planning on taking them to or serving them at a party with friends. This way I have snack sizes for my whole family to grab whenever we like. I store the snack bags in a freezer bag in the freezer.
9. These should last about 5 days in the fridge or much longer in the freezer. I couldn’t say how long as we usually eat them up quickly. I would think they would be good for a few months though.
10. Enjoy!

Here are the Macros in case you are counting:

Serving size: 2 brownies (1/16 of the batch without collagen)

Calories 240

Fat: 17g

Carbs: 17.5g

Protein: 6.5g

Serving size: 2 brownies (1/16 of the batch with collagen)

Calories: 245

Fat: 17g

Carbs: 17.5

Protein: 7.6

There you have it! I hope you love these chewy brownie bites as much as my family does!

Feel free to leave comments or questions in the comment section below.

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