Very easy, almost fool-proof, pb-almond-*-protein bars

Re-posting of a favorite recipe from our old blog.

Very easy, almost fool-proof, pb-almond-*-protein bars

A number of people (n=1) have begged for our recipe for healthy, low-carb, high fat protein bars. The term recipe implies that this there is a precise prescription that, if followed, will result in a particular, predeterminable result. We would rather think of our food design approach as a Darwinian process. The good news is that this recipe, and most low-carb oriented cooking, is amazingly robust. The emphasis is on the ingredients, not the precise proportions or the technique of the Chef-de-meat_course, Chef-de-SimulPasterie, or Enginuer-de-Assemblage-Protbar. (These are all made-up French words in case you can't tell.) The recipe development process followed in our Lab is correspondingly rigorous. Try something that seems to have the desired nutritional profile-- eg 25 gm protein to 18 gm carb to 10 gm sugar, infinite calories -- and mix together a few ingredients to get there. Usually it comes out fine the first time. The next time it will get slightly better. Attempt #3 is inevitably a disaster. But #4 is fine and refinements are perturbative in nature thereafter.


So without further rambling, here it is.

Ingredients

Bar Base
(makes enough to make you quite full, even distressingly so, if eaten by yourself within 24hr.)


Almond Flour 300g
Peanut Butter 350g (Almond Butter may be substituted but be sure to remove the PB from your recipe cataloging system)
Whey Protein 225g
Butter 150-200g (!) - depends on desired consistency
Eggs 220g (this is about 4 eggs; note the generous concession here to people without kitchen scales.)
Honey 120g (this can be replaced with your favorite sweetener, agave nectar works well too. Can be reduced arbitrarily)

Additional Flavor Enhancing Components Choose 0 or more (the "*" in PB-Almond-*-Bars)
Blueberries 200g -- these have essentially the same Carb & Sugar by weight as the recipe above. Adding them dilutes the protein content but will not change dramatically the BSPAC* index. (Bad-Stuff-Per-Amount-Consumed)
Dark Chocolate Chips or broken up dark chocolate (100-200g). We prefer 90% dark chocolate. Guittard 72% dark chocolate chips are a sweeter option for those still assessing their level of anti-sugar fanaticism. In any case, look to control the sugar by weight to align with the proportions of 20% or less sugar by weight. Lindt 90%, for instance, has 7.5%; the aforementioned Guittard over 25%.

Procedure

Mix together all the ingredients in a bowl.

Spread into a pan 1-2.5 inches (whoops! we've been metric untill now. Perhaps I should have said 2.5 - 2.5^2 cm thick...)

Bake at 375 degrees F [ (375-32)*5/9 degrees Celsius] until brown around edges and all that butter is bubbling up. Why this temperature? A lot of cookie recipes use this setting and we saw no reason to experiment with this parameter. But we may.

Cool

Eat
and/or
Eat (later) -- They seem to taste better the next day but that may be because you tasted so much of the batter during preparation.

The only knack is in putting the ingredients together in such away that it is easy to mix. We haven't solved this problem yet. Melting the butter, adding the whey protein slowly, and using ones specially evolved food-preparation appendages (hands, washed) is helpful.


Note added: Our editorial department has, with its routine perspicacity, identified an omission in the preparation of this recipe. If using chocolate, it is an entirely acceptable variation to first melt the chocolate and then homogenize it with the rest of the ingredients. The resultant choice of food-proxy target is thought, within certain erudite circles, to have considerable psychological significance. See for instance: S. Leefield and D. Hinesdorf, "Chocolate Chunk Cookies or Brownies, the choice is yours- or is it?", Annals of Food Hallucination, 1985 V2, No.5.

Approximate nutritional content by weight for the base
Protein - 26%
Carbs - 17%
Sugar - 10%
Calories/gm - you don't want to know... Oh, ok. 4.8
Sodium mg/gm - 50 (assumes salt-free butter, pb, ab, & Bob's Red-mill Whey Protein)
Fat - yes.


A 45gm bar - roughly 2.5^3 cubic cm - will fill you up nicely.