Do you want to feel like you are on a tropical island away from all the chaos? Once you get a taste of these Coconut Lime Homemade Lara Bars, you will feel like you have stepped into a tropical paradise. Then you will hear the kids screaming and be dragged back into your reality. You are still at home and have a ton of house work to do before your husband get home and thinks you have just been sitting around eating bon bons all day!

I have several allergies I have to cater to in my family. I have Little miss and little face are allergic to all nuts and little face is allergic to chocolate. This makes it extremely tough to buy healthy protein bars they can eat for snacks and breakfast. I am constantly searching for recipes I can modify to make for them.  Here is a homemade Lara bar recipe that is nut free, chocolate free, gluten free and also very frugal and very tasty. I wanted something that tasted summery. I am in a lime phase right now so I thought …

Coconut Lime Homemade Lara Bars

Nut free, Chocolate free, Gluten free

Ingredients:

1 cup Prunes $1.00

1 Cup SunButter (or Sunflower seeds) $1.00

Zest of one lime

Juice of ½ a Lime $0.30

½ cup Coconut  $0.50 (guess)

¼ cup Oatmeal  $0.19

Extra for sprinkles on top

I think prunes get a bad rap. They are way cheaper than dates. I purchased these for $2.00lb and dates are around $4.00lb. The prunes are very sweet and tasty just like dates. If you don’t like the word prune, just call them dried plums. Get over it!

 1. Get your food processor ready. Put in one cup of Sun Flower seeds or Sun Butter in. If you are using seeds let the processor go for a couple of minutes. You want a mealy consistency.

2. Add the oatmeal and process for one more minute.

3. Leave your processor on and add zest of one lime. This should be about 1 table spoon of zest. Add your lime juice.

4. Your processor should still be going and slowly add in the coconut.

5. Add prunes a little at a time. When all prunes are added, process for 1 minute or two on high. Make sure all the prunes have gotten all chopped up.

6. You should end up with a ball of brown stuff in your processor. This is a ball of goodness I assure you.

7. Spray the bottom of a 9X9 in pan and put your yummy prune, coconut, lime ball in there. I suggest spraying your hands with a little oil first. It is really sticky. And press the yummy ball in the bottom of the pan until all is even. I am not going to tell you what they look like if you don’t add the oatmeal on top, but you get the idea. I added the oatmeal for cosmetic purposes. It looks so much better, don’t you think?

8. Place in refrigerator for a couple of hours. Then take out and cut evenly into 8 homemade Lara bars. I cut four across then cut them in half. You can stack them in a container using some plastic wrap or wax paper.

These coconut lime homemade Lara bars are so delicious. I wish we had taste’o vision, so I could give you a sample. Both little face and little miss loved them. If you wanted to you could roll these up into little balls and roll them in a little oat flour to coat the outside to prevent them from sticking. This is what I was going to do, but I was too tired and didn’t have the energy. You can modify the recipe to include nuts or nut butters and still taste awesome.

This comes out to about $0.37 a bar! We had the coconut lime bars for breakfast. These homemade Lara bars stick with you. This really satisfies the mean hungry monster in the morning. You have to let me know if you try these. Really these taste great!

All the items reflect my rock bottom stock up prices. I purchased all these items on sale.

Featured on:

 ~   ~   ~

It’s time to party! Link up any Craft or Recipe link you would like to share. Let everyone know you linked up here at Pounds4Pennies, so they can share there great works too!

Most Veiwed last week was:

Strawberry Shortcake from Growing Up Gable!