Lily’s Bars

You know when you eat something and can feel your eyes rolling with delight? These bars do that for me. It is rare that “exceptionally healthy” and “delicious” come out of my mouth in the same sentence, but that describes these perfectly!
A friend of ours, Lily (who is, as an aside, the most extraordinary artist, check out her work here) brought these over a few months ago; and I slowly gathered the ingredients, and kept meaning to make them. Last week, Grace and I went off to visit our friend Nuala (who, as another aside, is a most extraordinary writer. Check out her website here. “The Closet of Savage Mementos” was one of my favourite books this year, and her third novel “Miss Emily” -wonderful name!!- will be published in 2015 by Penguin under the name Nuala O’ Connor) (by the way, it goes without saying, we only associate with extraordinary people, haw haw) so I decided to make, what we now call “Lily’s Bars”. The original recipe is here, but despite my squirrelling away of ingredients, I still didn’t have raw cacao to make it exactly.

Anyway, I reasoned with myself, what fun is there in never playing around and experimenting with a recipe?

Lily’s Bars

Ingredients
Bar:
2 1/2 cups mixed nuts
1/2 cup of stoned dates
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup organic hazelnut butter
1/2 cup organic coconut oil (melted/liquid)
2 – 3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Topping:
1/2 cup cocoa powder
6 tablespoons organic coconut oil (melted/liquid)
1 tablespoon maple syrup

To make:
Blitz the nuts, sunflower seeds, and hazelnut butter in a food processor and process for approximately 20 seconds (you don’t want mush, but not huge nut chunks either)

In another bowl, mix the melted coconut oil, maple syrup and vanilla extract until well blended.

Add the nut mixture and coconut oil/maple syrup mixture together and mix well together

Put the mixture in an 8 x 8 baking dish or tin, lined with parchment/baking paper. Wrap in cling film and put in the freezer for approximately 30 minutes or until firm.

For the topping:
Mix the coconut oil (melted/liquid), cocoa powder and maple syrup and stir until well combined.

Assembly:
Remove the bars from the freezer.

Pour the chocolate topping over the bars and spread it over the bars: the topping will harden as soon as it touches the cold bars so speed is of the essence here

Put the bars back to the refrigerator for approximately 15 – 30 minutes to allow the chocolate topping to completely harden.

Store in the refrigerator as they will become soft and “melt” if left out. Delicious as a breakfast bar, lunch bar, dinner bar, afternoon snack bar, mid morning snack bar, random treat… 🙂

• healthy bars,
• Nuala O'Connor,
• recipe,
• Saffron Lily,
• vegan