Lemon Lara

I am a huge fan of LaraBars. Not only do they come in a great variety of flavors, each one super delish, but each bar contains between only 2 and 9 ingredients - all real, whole foods, primarily nuts and dried fruits. No added sugars, no ingredients you can't pronounce, just real, yummy food.

Okay, commercial over. The only downside to the Lara love is that they are pretty expensive (not shocking, considering you typically get what you pay for with purchased food...). I watch out for good deals (in Madison - Woodmans and Hy-Vee sometimes have killer sales, and Trader Joe's has a limited selection of flavors but at a good price), but even with sales a bad LaraBar habit can break the bank.

So, yesterday, my girlfriends and I were discussing LaraBars (riveting, I know) and my friend Amy mentioned that you can find recipes online to make your own. Well, brilliant. And, duh. I should have thought of this sooner. Tonight, while I should have been grading my final round of papers, I gave it a try. My first experiment at homemade LaraBars!

I tried this recipe for Lemon Coconut LaraBars (one of my faves - mmm, lemon!). Here's a play by play in pictures...

All of the ingredients, ready to go!

Prepared to food process.

And processed.

Pressed into a pan, and now chilling in the fridge until I cut them and figure out how to store them tomorrow!

It was super easy. I taste-tested them - they are divine. And you can actually find a plethora of different but similar recipes if you look around online. I am so excited!

The ingredients weren't super cheap - I spent about $16 on everything, but I figure that one batch should make 10-12 bars, and I actually have enough for 2 full batches with the ingredients purchased. If you do the math, that's between $0.67 and $0.80 per bar, depending on the final count. Decent. Half the price of what you'd pay at the store sans sales.

This might just be my new favorite thing.