Toasted Coconut Protein Bars DIY

The other night I made some protein bars and thought I'd share them with y'all. Ha... did you just see that country-ness coming from me? I've been in Tennessee too long.

Oh ya... Back to the protein bars. FOCUS Stephanie Focus! So they other night I made protein bars but decided to play with some ingredients to change it up. So I used my normal base that I got from a recipe that Jamie Eason posted Carrot Cake Protein Bars. I ALWAYS recommend trying out the original before making changes and deviating from the original. So try her recipe before you play around... because it is really good!

Ok. So here we go. I thought it would be fun to change up the baby food flavor, which surprisingly changes the whole taste, I know I should have thought this... but I didn't. And then I added some coconut too... which was AWESOME! I've since made this recipe again, changing and adding a few other things so I'll share those at the end of the post. I give you Toasted Coconut Protein Bars... I don't know what to call them... But there is toasted coconut so it makes sense to me.

Toasted Coconut Protein Bars:

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Ingredients:

• 1 cup oat flour (check out my post last week for how to make your own)
• 2 scoops vanilla whey protein (I use the MRM brand and it works great. I get mine here)
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp allspice (I don't have this so I use pumpkin pie spice)
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg

• 4 egg whites
• 3/4 cup Splenda, Truvia, or Ideal
• 8 oz Apples and Cherry Baby Food
• 4 oz water

• 3 tbl Coconut (I used the baking sweetened kind which makes this not as clean as I'd like)

Directions:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix flour, whey protein, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, baking soda and salt together in a bowl.

Mix egg whites, Splenda, Apples and Cherry Baby Food and water (optional) in a bowl.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix together.

Spray baking dish with non-stick butter spray.

Pour ingredients into dish.

Pour 3 tablespoons coconut over top of mix.

Bake 25 minutes, then turn broiler on high and then I move my bars up a level and toast the coconut.

Makes 16 squares, 2 squares per serving.

Ok. My changes this time around. I changed my coconut to the bulk kind you buy at Whole Foods. It's not sweetened AT ALL. My opinion. I liked it better, it was a lot crunchier on top which I really liked. I also added 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. I don't think I can tell a difference so I'll just omit that next time.  I also made a second batch today where I mixed the coconut in the dry mix and did not put it over the top. I don't like it that way as much. I really like playing around with this recipe. I think next time I'm going to add raspberries to it and maybe a tbl of vanilla extract and change up some of the spices.

xo, Steph

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