Satisfyingly sweet, slightly salty, cold and crunchy chocolatey snack-attack goodness could be lurking in your freezer right now.
COULD be.
Maybe.
If you were the lucky type.
OR…
If you were me.
Ha!…yep that’s right, because I just blitzed up a batch of these babies, and I am not for one second exaggerating when I tell you that I’m pretty excited about it.
Raw oats and walnuts get the mosh pit treatment (aka the food processor😉) along with some dates (for sweetness) and a smidge of coconut oil (for binding). This raw “dough” becomes both crust and crumble, sandwiched around a luscious cacao layer made sweetly sandy with a little (but not much!) brown sugar action. Make like the Salt Bae with a sassy sprinkling, and you have got yourself the best little home-made (as in – actually nutritious) salted dark chocolate granola bar goodie to come along since, well – since never really, because store-bought crap can be so crappy.
But we’re not here to judge.
We’re here for the snacks.
Snacking in the best way possible, of course! So check it out…these babies are loaded with:
- Walnuts contain high amounts of omega-3 essential fatty acids which promote heart health and help lower blood pressure. They also have anticancer properties and speaking of nutty…..are known to improve cognitive function and memory (that’s a lot of good shiz in a small package).
- Raw, powdered cacao (NOT cocoa) is full of flavonoids, which act as natural antioxidants. Raw cacao has the highest antioxidant value of all the natural foods in the world. Really!
- Oats are loaded with important vitamins, minerals and antioxidant plant compounds. Okaaaaaay so there’s Manganese, Phosphorus, Magnesium, Copper, Iron, Zinc, Folate, and more! Yikes! Let’s just suffice it to say that oats are pretty darn nutrient dense, kay?
WHEW, I need something to nibble on after all that splainin’.
So let’s get crackin’. Perfectly good freezer time is wasting away…
But before you even get out your food processor, you gotta soak some dates! I used six large pitted medjool dates, and pushed them down into a glass measuring cup. Dates are smooshie like that so they’ll fit right down in there, then I added water UP to the 1/2 cup mark. NOT a half a cup of water but dates and water combined come up to the half cup point. You got it? Great! Now be sure your little bugs are completely submerged.
Just like that. Let these have a bit of a bath time,
while you gather up the rest of your ingredients. You’ll need 1-1/2 cups raw walnuts, 1-1/2 cups regular plain old oats, some coconut oil, vanilla extract, and some nice coarse salt, like Kosher. This is for your crust and crumble. You’ll also be needing some brown sugar and cacao powder (not pictured above) for your filling, so you might as well get those out too!
NOW you can get out the good old food processor (yes I actually have a new one but for some reason I can’t get rid of this old workhorse until she kicks the bucket, and she’s going strong). Pop in those walnuts and oats, and give that a pulse, pulse, pulse, just to jack everybody up a little bit. Add two tablespoons melted coconut oil, a pinch of salt, a couple of teaspoons of vanilla and those softened dates, soaking water and all, and let her rip! Make sure to go in and scrape the sides as you go. You’ll end up with a crumbly, sort of sticky granola-like “batter”. 
Remove about a cup to use for the crumble topping. In a 9×9 inch baking pan that you have lined with a sheet of wax paper, dump in the rest,
and press it down evenly to form a “crust” layer. Just use your fingers, it’s a little sticky but nothing you can’t handle. So far so good! Now set that aside for the moment while we mix together the cacao filling!
In a small bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup of melted coconut oil with 1/2 cup of cacao powder and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Give that a good thrashing to get the cacao powder lumps out. Add to that 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar (or coconut sugar) and give that a stir. You’ll end up with a crazy kinda gritty pool of crunchy bittersweet chocolate, and that is exactly what you want!
Just pour that vat of sandy sweetness over your crust and spread it evenly from end to end……
and then crumble over the remaining walnut/oat mix that you pulled out at the get go, so it looks like an actual crumble cookie! Press this down gently, and then give the whole she-bang a flourishing dust-up of kosher salt! I’m telling you what, that’s the ticket, riiiiight there, baby.
Now bang this into the freezer to get firmed up for about an hour.
Once it has hardened, use that wax paper to easily pop it up and out onto a cutting board. Now you can hatchet these up however you like, but I recommend cutting the whole square into thirds and then chopping each third into 8 bars for a total of 24 little snack bars. Keep them in a covered container in the deep freeze.
You’ll get 24 trips to the freezer for a little hit of salty sweet, delightfully gritty crunchy chocolatey happiness. How great is that?
Happy snackin’ at its finest.
RECIPE BELOW: You will easily clock the prep time in for this at around 20 minutes, if not less. It took longer to wash out the bowl that the cacao filling was mixed up in, that’s pretty annoying. Sorry not sorry 😀. They will need at least a half an hour to harden up, but then….. seriously addictive sweetness awaits, without the guilt. Spread it around. 💜
- 6-7 large Medjool dates, pitted (pressed into a glass measuring cup and soaked in water to reach 1/2 cup total)
- 1-1/2 cups raw walnuts
- 1-1/2 cups raw oats
- 2 tablespoons melted coconut oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- a healthy pinch (or 1/4 teaspoon) kosher salt
- 1/2 cup cacao powder**
- 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/3 cup dark brown sugar (or coconut sugar)*
- Kosher salt for sprinkling
- Make sure to start by soaking the dates in some water. Push the dates down into a glass measuring cup and fill with water up to the 1/2 cup mark. Let that sit for a bit while you get the remainder of your ingredients together.
- Add the walnuts and oats to a food processor and pulse them around the get everybody chopped up a bit. Add the dates (along with the soaking liquid), two tablespoons of melted coconut oil, two teaspoons of vanilla and a pinch of salt, and continue mixing until you have a nice coarse crumble. This will be sticky, so be sure to scrape down the sides once or twice as you pulse everything together. Remove a cup of the "batter" and set that aside. Take the remaining batter and tip that into a 9x9 inch baking pan lined with a sheet of wax paper (overhanging on two sides). Press the mixture down evenly with your fingers to form a bottom layer. Set this aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup cacao powder, 1/4 cup melted coconut oil and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla; taking care to get the lumps out of the cacao. Stir in the dark brown sugar.
- Pour the cacao mixture over the crust mixture in the pan, and spread it evenly over everything. Crumble over the reserved oat/walnut mixture, and press this down gently. Finish with a generous sprinkling of kosher salt, evenly over the square. Let this freeze for at least a half an hour.
- Use the wax paper to pop the entire "cookie" out onto a cutting board. Cut into thirds and then slice each third into 8 pieces for a total of 24 bars. Store in the freezer in a covered container.
- Enjoy whenever you are craving a happy snack attack and you are trying to be good about it!
- * Now you may be tempted to use maple syrup (vegan) or honey (not vegan) as the sweetener for the cacao filling here and although you can totally do that if you like.......it will take away the surprisingly satisfying Ka-Runch that the brown sugar (or coconut sugar, totally works here!) provides. Just sayin'. So don't do it. ** and remember, this is cacao powder we are using here and not cocoa powder (like, for hot cocoa), okay?
