Delicious and healthy homemade nut bars with honey are the perfect recipe if you want to incorporate more healthy snacks into your daily menu. Making these homemade nut bars is very easy and can be done on a Sunday afternoon when you’re preparing for your week ahead.
I love nuts! Any kind – almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios… I’m always snacking on them. I always have a 1 litre jar in my kitchen, which is always full of a mix of different nuts. This is perhaps why it’s no surprise that nut bars are my go to dessert when I want to reduce my sugar intake.
Well, I know, I know, maple syrup and honey are still sugars. However these ingredients are way better than processed white sugar. Especially when you use honey from your hometown beehives (yes, this is how crazy I am – I asked my mum to send a jar of honey from Lithuania).
I used to buy similar nut bars because I thought they were too complicated to make at home. But the reality is they are crazy easy to make, combine all the good ingredients and flavour-wise these nut bars deliver all the goodness.
Homemade Nut Bars with Honey Ingredients
Everything about this recipe screams delicious. Here is the full ingredients list, which can be easily adapted and swapped for the products you already have in your kitchen cupboard:
- Mix of different nuts – for this recipe I used almonds, peanuts and pecans, but you can sneak in pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts or even macadamia nuts.
- Maple syrup and honey – these products help bind everything together and give the right amount of sweetness for these bars.
- Sea salt – this is the mandatory ingredient that helps lift the flavour.
- Dry fruits – for this recipe I used cranberries and raisins, but feel free to add goji berries, blueberries or even mulberries.
- Seed mix – this is where you can go crazy and add superfood ingredients. You can use linseed, chia, hemp seeds… the sky’s the limit!
Tips to Make the Best Homemade Nut Bars
This recipe is really easy, but a few things need to be highlighted and explained in more detail:
- Heating the maple syrup and honey. Make sure the mixture reaches boiling point. This will act like a sugar syrup for combining the nuts.
- If your homemade nut bars are too wet or too dry. This is easily solvable – just add more nuts to the mixture or drizzle more maple syrup to combine the bars.
- Cooling time. This is the mandatory part of this recipe. If you’re very impatient, put the tray with the nut mixture into your freezer and let it cool for 2-3 hours before cutting it into bars.
- Use a sharp knife to slice the nut mixture. To have identical looking bars you’ll need the sharpest knife possible.
If you love healthy bars recipes, try out this one too:
Healthy Raw Oat Bars with Pineapples
Recipe
Ingredients
150g cashews
150g almonds
100g peanuts
100ml maple syrup
150ml honey
Pinch of salt
50g cranberries
50g raisins
150g seeds mix (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame)
Method
- Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
- Add all the nuts (almonds, cashews and peanuts) on a baking tray and roast them in the oven for 10 minutes until they turn golden.
- Add the maple syrup, honey and pinch of salt into a pot or pan. Heat the mixture on a low heat until it reaches 120 degrees.
- Line the baking tray with a baking sheet.
- Mix the roasted nuts, seeds, dry fruits and honey mixture.
- Add the mixture on a baking tray. Spread evenly. Cover the bars with a baking sheet and with a glass or jar press the mixture firmly down, to close any gaps or holes (video)
- Keep the bars in the fridge for two hours or even overnight.
- After the mixture is set, take it out from the fridge and cut it into same size nut bars.
