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Healthy peanut butter granola bars are a peanut butter, oats and Rice Krispie’s base sweetened with maple syrup and brown sugar substitute. They’re topped with melted chocolate and flakey salt and are perfect snack, pre-workout snack or dessert. When prepared with the exact ingredients listed in the recipe, they’re extremely macro friendly coming in at 125 calories, 5 grams of protein, 5 grams of fat and 17 carbs.
There are three substitutions that make these bars so healthy. The first calorie saver is Pbfit peanut butter powder. You save an incredible amount of fat and calories when you forfeit peanut butter for this. Just mix with water and a little maple syrup to create a peanut butter paste. Pre-making the paste isn’t even necessary since it gets cooked down in a pot. I just am in the habit of creating the peanut butter first for other recipes. Feel free to just dump the powder, water and tablespoon of maple syrup directly in the pot. Followed by brown sugar substitute (Swerve is my favorite) and maple syrup. When making healthy recipes I find if there are a lot of sugar free ingredients, my intestines aren’t happy. Therefore, I use real maple syrup for these bars. If you’re strictly sugar free, use Choc Zero sugar free maple syrup. The bars get topped with melted chocolate (I use Choc Zero sugar free milk chocolate chips) and finally flakey salt.
An optional ingredient to add to these bars is protein powder. One serving of protein powder has between 20-30 grams of protein, but when spread out amongst 12 servings, it becomes a miniscule amount. Still, I wanted each bar to be at least 5 grams of protein, so I added it. I used the chocolate peanut butter flavor from clean simple eats. If you grab some be sure to use my discount code “LAURENBOWER” to save 10% on your order. The beautiful thing is you can even buy single sample packets from them and not commit to a big bag!
These are a no-bake treat but they do have to sit in the refrigerator until the chocolate hardens. This took two hours for me. If you’re in a hurry, you can put the bars in the freezer. Don’t cut them until they’ve hardened. The size dish I used was a 2-quart casserole dish. That’s somewhat of an obscure baking dish to have, so if you can’t stand waiting to make these just use an 8×8 or 9×9 pan and your bars will either be a tad thicker or thinner.
While you’re here check out more healthy recipes here!
Healthy Peanut Butter Granola Bars
Ingredients
- 1/2 c Pbfit peanut butter powder
- 1/4 c water
- 1 tbsp maple syrup
- 1 1/2 c quick cooking or rolled oats
- 1 1/2 c Rice Krispie's cereal
- 1/4 c maple syrup
- 1/2 c brown sugar substitute swerve
- 1 c chocolate chips choc zero
- 1 serving chocolate peanut butter powder optional
Instructions
- Make the peanut butter by combining Pbfit peanut butter powder with water and 1 tbsp maple syrup. Mix in a bowl with a spoon until it forms a paste.
- Add the peanut butter paste to a pot followed by 1/4 cup maple syrup and the brown sugar substitute.
- Melt over medium heat, switch to a whisk and whisk until everything has melted together and the sugar has dissolved. Pull off the heat.
- To a large mixing bowl add oats, Rice Krispie's, protein powder (optional) and peanut butter sauce and mix until combined.
- Place mixture in a 2-quart casserole dish and press down into the bottom of the dish.
- Melt chocolate chips and pour over the bars. Spread out evenly on top.
- Top with flakey salt and allow to harden in the fridge for 2 hours.
- Cut into 12 squares.