Healthy Homemade Snack Bar
by Scott Tousignant · Filed Under: Nutrition
Angie just baked up a great healthy home made snack bar recipe that was recommended to her by a friend. Her friend had mentioned that her kids loved them and had no idea that there were some very healthy ingredients in them.
These healthy snack bars certainly passed the taste test with our kids as well, which is really great news because we are always looking for healthy snack choices to put in their lunches.
Here’s the ingredients:
Combine…
2 cups of oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup brown sugar (that’s the only bad part)
3/4 cup raisins
1/2 cup wheat germ or ground flax seed (we did the flax)
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
Stir in…
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
Optional: we added just a few chocolate chips to make our kids happy 
Seriously… just a few chocolate chips in the entire mixture is all you need.
Blend well. Spray a 9 x 6 baking dish and pat mixture with a spatula. Bake for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees until the edges are golden brown.
Enjoy this tasty and healthy snack bar and be sure to let us know what you think about it.
To achieving your limitless potential,
Scott Tousignant
Hi Scott!
Hope you’re doing well.
This looks like a great recipe. I’m printing it out now, and will whip up a batch this weekend. I’m hoping my kids will like them !
Thanks for sharing another healthy recipe.
Becky Williamson
Hey Scott,
I have gluten free version of a snack bar recipe. My family loves it. I can’t wait to try to make a gluten free version of yours. It sounds really good.
Thanks for sharing.
Mary
Woot!! These look awesome! Thanks Scott & Angie for this recipe. Gonna have to make these for sure.
Traci
Looks yummy. I’m going to make it sometime this week. Great healthy choice to share with my grandchildren. Keep these great recipes coming Scott and Angie
OK this will be in my kitchen this week! Thanks for sharing. I love making bars!
Thanks for sharing the recipe, I love new healthy recipes to try. I’m wondering though, do they taste very sweet? 3/4 cup sugar AND 1/4 cup honey seems a lot, especially with the raisins for sweetness too, not to mention a little from the applesauce! Obviously it will be easy for me to try with less sugar, thanks for the starting point.
Glad to hear that everyone is enjoying the recipe. Mary, you’ll have to hook me up with your gluten free version. I’m sure that will benefit many people.
Hilary, they don’t taste very sweet. You could use 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil and skip the 1/4 cup of apple sauce if you wanted to. We used unsweetened apple sauce.
That’s the great thing about recipes… you can slightly alter them to your likings
Would love to know the nutritional value per serving?
I’ll try to do a break down of the nutritional value per serving. Guess I’ll have to decide what a serving size is
I was interested in light of what Hillary mentioned about all the sugar (brn, honey, raisins). Most of smaller pans are either 9X9 or 8X8 standard brownie. You can easily get 16 squares out of each pan – so I would go w that as a serving size and if people want to go smaller from there they can. Thanks!
Hillary: that’s so funny that you immediately thought of ways to ‘adjust’ the recipe before cooking it!!! That’s what I do all the time!!! This time I am going to go against my natural inclination and make it Angie’s way first… I am working on some personal ‘perfectionistic’ issues and making this recipe ‘as is’ will be great practice at making my self ‘go with the flow’ rather than drive my self unrealistically hard to ‘improve’ on every thing I do.
Thanks for making me think about this!!!
I hope my family likes it, too
honey (non raw), brown sugar, applesauce, and raisins? Maybe they are ok ingrediants but these will do nothing for fat loss….sugar is really high and protein is really low……there are much better recipes out there that are high in protein, low in sugar and taste great.
Nicole, I see where you are coming from. Could the recipe be even healthier… sure! Some people have already made great comments about how they will tweak the recipe to suit their needs, such as Mary who will be creating a gluten free version, which I will be more than happy to share.
Yes we used raw honey, but not everybody has that in their cupboards. Next time we will see how it is with less brown sugar. Raisins are high in sugar, but there are such a small amount that it’s not bad at all.
Do you avoid fruit because it has sugar in it?
I don’t promote perfectionism. I am always taking steps to improve my nutrition. I follow my friends who live a raw food lifestyle and adopt some of what they do, but I’m not anywhere near the point of going 100% raw or even 80% raw.
This is not a complete meal. It may not have a lot of protein… but there is protein in it.
Will this recipe do nothing for fat loss? If that’s all that I ate all day long and didn’t exercise, and consumed more calories than I burn… No it wouldn’t do anything for fat loss.
But this is a snack. It’s an alternative to some of the packaged crap that’s much worse, and yes it is a healthier alternative. Are there healthier alternatives. Yes. But I bet that if you were to post a recipe someone else could come along and find an even healthier version.
We can’t have a total dogmatic approach and shoot down all other approaches that may not fit into our lifestyle. Once again, I’ll reference Mary’s wonderful response. That was a great approach and we can work together to spread other alternatives because she didn’t build a wall between us and say it has to be this way of the highway.
If you haven’t noticed, my wife and I have 6 pack abs, yet we can consume snacks like this and enjoy a chocolate bar and pizza. You’ve got to look at the entire picture and this snack is just a small piece of the puzzle and a much healthier alternative to commonly consumed snacks.
When I’m preparing healthy snacks I don’t obsess over protein, carb, and fat ratios. I eat incredibly well throughout the day and I will not stress over the natural sugar that’s in the small amount of raisins in this snack. I’m also not going to stress over the healthy fat in avocado’s in my salad.
I see where you are coming from Nicole, I just don’t care for your approach. That’s not the way to make a positive change in the world and encourage people to make a healthier choice. You need to work together with people, help them, and encourage them, not shoot them down.
I’m certainly open to hearing some healthier snack options from you that we can share with our readers. That would be awesome!
The nutritional value of this snack will be posted soon. By the way, the pan was 9 x 13 not 9 x 6.
I totally agree with Scott’s final comments from 5/9. The recipe is a great healthier snack from which to start. Each person has a responsibility to tweak ingredients to honor their own health conditions or situations which they are managing. I always appreciate ideas for healthier alternatives – especially when they are already tried and are good. Thank you for your quest not only for seeking optimal and balanced health for yourselves, but also your passion for bringing others on that journey!
Hi,
Nice recipe and I make something similar. Except I don’t use wheat flour or sugar or honey. I do use raisins, chopped unsweetened prunes and dark chocolate chips. Also I add protein powder to it to increase the protein content.
You can even try replacing sugar and honey with stevia!
Thanks,
Sasha
Well it’s a real hit in my house and Master 12 is a bit of a critic! He’s had 3 pieces and will take 2 for a snack at school tomorrow.
One change I made was to substitute dried kelp for the salt… you see my 22Yr old daughter was learning to take blood pressure on us (as part of her Masters in Chiropractic) and we are both getting out of the healthy range… so just thought I’d lighten up on the salt
Could use Chia seeds with the flax (no need to grind, apparently… and higher protein and other minerals etc…)
I’m so glad its now an alternative snack… Master 12 complains bitterly that I don’t give him any packaged snacks for school… just a sandwich and fruit …
thanks for the comments and ideas every one
Hi Scott…I took the liberty of plugging the ingredients into recipenutrition.com and at 14 servings (using 2 tbsp chocolate chips) here is what came up for the nutritional information: calories 310, carbs 54, protein 7, fat 8, fiber 3.
You are my hero Jamie!!!
That would be a very generous serving of a 1 inch by 9 inch bar. I’d probably cut the serving size almost in half, but I was guessing around 24 servings. But I’m sure many people would go for 2 helpings
Thank you very much for plugging the info in for us.
wow! this sounds like a fun yummy snack ;D gonna try it later. we have 4 kids and dadddy and i are in pretty good shape but always looking for healthier yummy things to keep us all as healthy as possible. i find i am spending so much money on snacks for school. we like to think we eat at least 80 percent good and 20 percent whatever. i am a good cook and i like healthy foods. iam good at tweaking things to make them healthier but still super satisfying and yummy. we have type 1 diabetic daughter and we are always looking at snacks that are less processed. if you understand that all the junk they put in foods to preserve them and make them sweat, make us want more of them and hit the blood sugars harder and faster, then even if you are putting real honey (which has many benefits as well as raisins) then its still a good snack, esp if you are super active and you need a quick carb fix. i like the comments for the most part on this site, glad i found it!cant wait to try this recipe…super glad i saw the last post about the site that you can figure out the nutritional info! i drive myself nuts trying to count the carbs on homemade recipes for my daughter ;D