Cashew Coconut Snack Bar Recipe

As I have written before we have made Granola Bars at home a few times. In fact I love them so much that I made it my misson one month to make them every weekend to try and perfect as recipe.

Then my wife found this recipe for Cashew Coconut bars and I was a little apprehensive. No Granola? How could this work? And also baked, and with not much in the way of wet ingredients I had no idea how these would hold together.

But they do. And I was intrigued to try them…

So I made these Cashew Coconut Snack bars. Last week in fact and everyone around the house loved them so much in a small batch in a 8×8 pan that I decided to double the recipe and use a 9 x 13 inch pan for this batch that I made today.

So here is the recipe that I used today (doubled so no one has to do the math)

Ingredients

To the left you can see how these look when mixed

2/3 Cup of Honey
1/2 Cup finely ground Almonds (slivered would work instead if you want)
2 Tablespoons Almond Butter
1 1/2 Cups of shredded Unsweetened Coconut
1 Cup Dried Cranberries
2 Tablespoons Chia Seeds
2 2/3 Cups Unsalted Cashews ground roughly

Directions

Ok, first of all start up the oven and preheat to 300 degrees. I know this is not very hot but nuts can be delicate and burn at a higher temperature.
Mix the first four ingredients together; honey, almonds, almond butter, and coconut. You will find that this forms a kind of thick paste
Now you can add the cranberries and chia seeds, this will thicken everything up quite a bit
Finally add in all the ground cashews. I made sure that they were pretty big still to add a bit of that soft cashew crunch. This will really thicken up this batter and it will stick together but not terribly well, which is fine
Next put this in a 9×13 inch pan that is lined with parchment paper, this will stop it from sticking to the pan
Now you need to flatten the mixture hard. As with my Granola Bars, I found that putting a piece of parchment paper on top helps. I can then use my hands to flatten the mix, and then pushing the mix down very hard and flat with an 8×8 inch pan on top I can really flatten it
Put the pan in the oven uncovered for 20 minutes, let cool on the stove for a bit after, and then put in the fridge to harden for an hour or so. I think that the cooking really makes these stick together and the fridge hardens them up

This will give you, I think 16 little bars 4 wide and 4 long cut out of the pan