Protein bars/cookies

On a whim I went by the supermarket on the way home and bought up some ingredients and made up some protein "blobs" tonight:

250g lite smooth peanut butter
50g honey
50g almond meal
50g sesame meal
50g wheat meal
50g linseed
50g whey concentrate (83% protein)
50g calcium caseinate (96.4% protein)
couple of eggs
splash of 0% milk
extra CC and wheat meal to get the consistency right

With that I made 6 sticky "blobs" and one small bowl-scraping one to check how they go in the oven. The breakdown per blob is:

Protein: 28.33g
Total fat: 29.18g
Saturated fat: 4.81g
Total carbohydrates: 25.97g
Sugars: 20.64g

not including the last 3 ingredients. The mixture is pretty sticky. I could've added more dry stuff to reduce the stickiness but it was a ***** to mix already. The cooked one came out great - the cooking process removed some of the sweetness of the mixture and it tasted a bit "wheaty". It would (and did) go well with a glass of milk. I put the others in the freezer and was gunna put one in my lunchbox each day for smoko, but I might try out one and if it's not so good cook the rest too. Hopefully cooking doesn't do anything adverse to the protein - dunno.

Time to make? About 5 min.
Total cost not incl. the last 3 ingredients? AUD$1.37/blob.

Looks good.

That's a lot of fat. They look more like Meal Replacement blobs than protein blobs :)

They're about 416 calories per blob, btw. How do they taste?

What does all the fat come from? The peanut butter? I don't know what any of that stuff that ends in "meal" is. Can you eat it by itself or is it an ingredient (like flour or something)?

Toby,

Sounds good.

Can your juicer make fresh ground peanut butter? If so, you can ground up your own almonds and peanuts.

Suggestions for next batch:

1) Reduce honey a little and add blackstrap molasses. The molasses should help give it some crunch,

2) Crushed walnuts

3) 1 teaspoon of lecithin

What temperature did you cook them at?

mickey

Iron,

Meal == ground I guess. Almond meal just looks like ground almonds. Sesame meal looks like ground sesame seeds. Wheat meal you could substitute for oatmeal or bran I guess. IIRC they had similar macronutrient proportions. The fat comes from yeah, the PB even though I got a "lite" one which had about 40% fat instead of the regular 60% IIRC. Most of the saturated fat comes from there too. The almond and sesame have a lot of fat too, but hardly any saturated. The PB and honey contain most of the carbs and mostly as sugar (obviously in honey's case).

Taste? The cooked one was nice. A bit like a peanutty Anzac cookie, which you won't be familiar with. The wheat taste was more dominant in the cooked version than in the raw mix (where the PB and honey dominated - i.e. sweetness) because I put in an extra 25g or so of CC to dry out the mix and it needed more so I kept incrementally adding wheat meal - dunno how much. I've got one in my lunchbox that I pulled out of the freezer this morning, so I'll eat it in an hour or two and let you know. I'm anticipating it'll taste like the raw mixture - peanut and sweetness dominating.

You're right about more "meal replacement" than "protein". I just wanted something with lots of protein. With two eggs and some milk I guess they're about 30g protein each. The problem is that most recipes that I've seen on here and other sites have peanut butter and honey as the main ingredients and that's where the badness comes. But you need some liquidy stuff to balance the dry ingredients.


mickey,

Juicer is probably too weak to grind nuts. But my wife's got a Kitchenaid and you can get a nice (super-expensive) grain mill to fit it. Might be an option, but see above about needing liquid stuff i.e. peanut butter.

molasses - not a bad idea. I've never used molasses AFAIK, not ever. It's not so popular over here I guess. It might make it even harder to mix though :D. That's another good thing - I supersetted mixing with forearm night last night and it gave me a good forearm workout :D.

Crushed walnuts is another good'un. But the shop only had kernels and I picked up whatever looked like it would mix well. I'm open to any nut options.

Lecithin? Yeah, we've got some in the cupboard. I'll take a look at it next time.

I cooked it at 180 degrees C (350 deg F?), which was too hot. It started to burn so I turned it down to 150. When I took it out it was still softish inside (but partially cooked) with a crisp shell. You could depress it with your finger - maybe the firmness of a soft orange.

I'm happy with them. Usually when I'm hungry I'll go to the shop and get biltong and pay about AUD$3.60 for 30g protein. I looooove biltong, but 3x the price? I'm not so happy with the fat and carbs, but I'm happy that saturated fats are low. Not so happy with sugary carbs, but I can live with that for a mid-morning snack. Then again, IIRC comparable "protein bars" that my supermarket stocks have similar protein content, higher sugary carbs and lower fat content but for about AUD$5. I'm looking at these sorta like a high-protein Powerbar replacement.

Taste of raw, defrosted blobs? Yeah, O.K. The first couple of bites were very nice. The last couple not so ;). It was kinda like cookie dough and how it seems great at first, but later probably a bad idea. You were right Iron, it is a meal replacement - one blob filled me up nicely. I dunno how much this particular blob weighed. 3/4 of it would've been fine - the last 1/4 was the killer. Too sugary/rich for my palate. I'm gunna cook the others since the cooked version was much nicer. I reckon I could easily eat the cookie version.

They really are MR blobs. I could've done without lunch altogether, but I'd brought it with me and I like to eat it all so my pack's lighter for the ride home :D. I waited 3 hrs to have lunch and I still felt completely full. Now, after lunch as well, I'm stuffed. All in all I'm pretty happy with the recipe and the results.

ttt since there've been a couple of comments about protein bars in the last day or two.

BTW, I found another recipe that I'm gunna try. It used apple juice as the "wet" part of the recipe instead of peanut butter and honey. Might come out to have less sugar/fat. Still, I'm not unhappy with the low saturated fat and decent protein/sugar ratio in these ones.

AAAHHHHHHH,

I made some protien bars last night.

2 mugs of oats,
1/2 jar of honey
1/2 jar peanut butter
3 scoops of protien

to make 3bars

I had one this morn and its ****ing rank!
I wanted to put one portion of protien powder in each bar so it was the same as a shake. But the bar just tastes of powder, i cant eat a whole one as it tastes like gooey powder.

I would try toby's one but im not perpared to eat raw eggs. Dont know about in the states, but in the uk you can get salmanella which can put you in hospital for a week.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/disea...be%20diagnosed

could anyone tell me how to post a link but make the link read a diffrent word. Ive seen some people do it and i think it looks much better. thanks

you guys might try the dough beater on one of those stand mixers like Kitchenaid


http://www.chefscatalog.com/store/ca...showCrumb=true

the hook like thing is specifically for doughs and might work well for mixing these bars.

not worth it if you don't have one already or know someone who has one. $$$$

Yeah, we've got a Kitchenaid. But I mixed my bars by hand.

manofkent, although I have no qualms about eating raw eggs, I did decide that they tasted better cooked anyway. So I cooked the rest of that first batch and other batches since.

To post a link with different text, use the "http://" button on the "Post Reply" form page. Or manually type in the url tags in forum format if you know what they look like. Quoting other people's posts lets you see what they've done.