Awesome No-bake Energy Bars

I love these energy bars because they taste great, easy to make and freeze well.

A lot of energy bars use peanut butter, which is great, but can be overwhelming. These bars, with the combination of honey and coconut (as well as other things) are much lighter on the peanut butter taste. Funnily enough, there's enough PB taste for those who love it, but light enough for those who aren't as enthusiastic.

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened, your call)
• 1/3 cup mini-chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/2 cup chia or flax seed (optional).

Equipment

• Large bowl
• Spoon
• Cookie sheet
• Rolling pin
• Parchment paper (optional, but very handy)

Note: The images for this Instructable were done with a triple batch, the amounts listed won't make as much. I could have used another batch to fill the cookie sheet in later steps).

Step 1: Stir It Up

Start with your dry ingredients (coconut, chocolate chips, oatmeal and flax/chia seeds) and mix together well. Not a necessary step, but can make it easier to ensure you get a consistent mixture.

Add the honey and peanut butter and mix well until you have a pretty thick mixture.

The mixture will be sticky in the end, but if you feel it's a little too wet, add a little more oatmeal.

Step 2: Roll and Cut (or Ball Them Up)

After you've mixed you ingredients well, you'll want to prepare your cookie sheet.

Cut a piece of parchment paper the size of your cookie sheet and place on the bottom.

Bar them

Put your mixture on the parchment, and lay another sheet of parchment over the top of the mixture. This helps keep your rolling pin from sticking to the mixture.

Roll out your bars to your desired thickness. I used the edges of the sheet to get a relatively consistent thickness by running my pin on two sides at once.

After rolling out, cut to the desired size. Cover with the parchment before freezing (just in case).

Or

Ball them

If you don't want to have flat bars, you can refrigerate your mixture for 30min, then roll clumps of the mixture into small balls and place on a cookie sheet for freezing.

I prefer the bars as they can be eaten easier when fully frozen where as the balls have to thaw more first, but to each their own.

Freeze them!

After making into the desired shape, put the entire cookie sheet and bars into the freezer for an hour or so.

Step 3: Break Them Up

Once frozen, the bars will be less gooey and easily separate. This way you can stack them without worry that you're going to have a single monolith of energy bar. I still stagger them for easier separation.

Place in a freezer bag and you're good to go.

These bars are great as a snack or pre/post workout energy.

Enjoy and thanks for looking.