This is a great breakfast or snack bar – and they travel really well. I like to get fresh, organic cherries during their peak season, freeze them and then make this recipe throughout the year.
The recipe is based on one by Matt Amsden in RAWVolution, but I have changed the type of fruit (to suit my love of cherries) and the ingredient measurements (to make the bars a bit moister). Also quite good with the original mix of strawberries, blueberries and/or raspberries.
Ingredients:
2 cup raw almonds
1 cup raw walnuts
¾ cup flax seeds
3 cup cherries
1½ cup raisins
Preparation:
- In a food processor, grind almonds and walnuts. Place them in a large bowl.
- Grind flax seeds to a powder (using a blender or coffee grinder) and place in a smaller bowl.
- Blend cherries to a liquid in blender, then add flax seed powder and blend again. If your blender is not high-speed, you may want to do the mixing by hand.
- Mix all ingredients together, with nuts, in large bowl.
- Spread mix evenly on 1 Teflex-lined dehydrator tray (should be about an inch thick – I have a 5-tray dehydrator and use one full tray).
- Dehydrate at 100°F for 12 hours. Flip tray over, peel off Teflex and return to dehydrator for another 12 hours.
- Once dehydrated, cut into 18 pieces (make 2 cuts horizontally and 5 cuts vertically).
sharing raw, vegan recipes and advice
If I don't want to use walnuts or pecans, is there something else that would be good instead of the walnuts? This sounds really good!
AliciaD: A week isn't too long at all, especially if you have them in a refrigerator.
Sound really GOOD!
Does anyone know how long this stuff keeps for? Is a week too long?
I just bought 17 pounds of cherries. Between the 2 of us, we can't eat 17 pounds before they go bad and I didn't want to freeze all of them. I made three times this recipe (and froze the rest of the cherries). One inch thick is WAY TOO THICK which does not come close to filling one tray (edge-to-edge) of my Excalibur dehydrator. I made mine about a 3/4 inch thick. BTW, it still doesn't fill the whole tray either.
I really like how you they don't come out hard and crisp and you can cut them after 24 hours of dehydration. Nice! I would prefer it to be sweeter (only because I have a sweet tooth), but they are good. I'm glad I can use frozen cherries for this recipe. And, I'm going to try the Cherry Ice cream too... sounds delicious!
I have one question. How do you know when the bars are done in the dehydrator? Should they be harder like a cookie? I took mine out when they were harder on the outside and chewy on the inside. Just curious as to how everyone else does it. Thanx!
I made this and its awesome...love it!!!
I didn't have any cherries due to the season but I made it with blueberrys, and raspberries and they were good. Thanks for the recipe!
I made these and love them. Great to grab and take along when you're in a hurry.
This is such a good recipe. Sometimes we just have them for breakfast, but they make great snacks anytime. I like that they're not too sweet, they're just right the way they are.