No-Bake Almond Oat Coconut Date Bars

Long hiatus. Moved to California. Now have access to a bigger and grander kitchen that came already stocked with all kinds of exotic flours and dried beans and nuts and shrugs as to what to do with them. Yay for me! Yay for you. Yay for us.

Anyway, so today I found a bag of dates in the pantry. Dates are basically ugly balls of natural sugar with pesky little seeds that you have to take care to remove. To be frank, I've never actually used dates before. These are not in my usual repertoire of food objects, so today is an experiment.

To make these bars, you'll need a food processor. I used my brand new Nutribullet which I love because when it's not being used to create edible things, it's being used to facilitate my consumption of absurd amounts of greens that I would otherwise never put into my system. I'd dedicate a blog entry to it, but honestly,  "handful of spinach and a banana..." not very interesting. 

So, right, food processor. 

No-Bake Almond Oat Coconut Date Bars 

(adapted recipe from Oh She Glows)

• 1.5 cups of almond meal (ground almonds)
• 1.5 cups of oats
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt (or kosher salt or any salt, whatever, who cares)
• 10 pitted dates
• 1/4 cup coconut oil

Filling (make separately)

• 30 pitted dates
• 1/2 cup water

1. Process the almonds, oats, 10 pitted dates and salt until you get a crumbly meal. Then add the coconut oil (melt first if solidified). 

2. Press about 1/4 of the mixture into the bottom of a glass-bottomed 8x8" pan. 

3. Process the remaining 30 pitted dates with 1/2 cup of water until you get a sticky date goo. (Mmmm, goo.)

4. Press the goo into the pan, over your pressed meal layer. 

5. Press the remaining meal over the goo layer.

6. Refridgerate at least 1 hour, preferably 8-10 hours.

7. Don't do what I did which was to wait 45 minutes and be super impatient about it because you're wicked impatient because you'll get something crumbly and messy like what you see below and not the professional-looking bars that other bloggers seem to achieve. But it tastes good.

(mmm. goo.)