Clean Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Oat Protein Bars

To continue the trend of using the kitchen before everything else is completely unpacked, my dear husband asked me to bake something for him. Granted, this was a recipe he could have easily done himself, but he doesn't enjoy baking as much as I do, and sends anything remotely baking-centric my way. 

Matt eats a lot. I'm talking almost 3000 calories-a-day a lot. So he's always looking for things to fill him up that don't take a whole lot of time once they're already prepared. We try our very best to keep things clean. Yes, it's hard, and some days are better than others... But for the most part, I think we do pretty well, and over time, it's just gotten engrained into our habits. We are always trying new recipes and looking for new ideas to incorporate clean ingredients. 

Matt had been looking for a clean recipe for granola bars that was high in protein, low in sugar, hearty, and easy to make. He noticed that a lot of the protein/granola bars in the organic and gluten free sections of the grocery store still contained a lot of other ingredients, so he wanted something we could make at home. Not only would it be clean, but it would be cheaper, too!

He came across this recipe, and we adapted it a little bit. If you would like to use the original, feel free. This is the recipe I used:

• 2 cups of oats-- roasted without oil
• 1 cup natural peanut butter
• 1/2 cup agave nectar
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 2 tablespoons mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup whey protein powder
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons ground flaxseed

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Layer your oats in a thin layer on a baking sheet. 

Toast oats for 10 minutes, moving them around with a spatula halfway through to prevent scorching or burning. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.

Reduce oven temperature to 325ºF. Combine all of the other ingredients into a large mixing bowl, stirring with a spatula. 

We use all natural peanut butter. This means there is nothing else but peanuts and salt. Period. JIF, Skippy, all the "big name" companies make "natural" peanut butter, but they all have added sugar. Do yourself a favor and try actual natural peanut butter. Our favorites are Giant brand and Smucker's.

When measuring peanut butter, wet your measuring cup and spatula. You'll be able to remove the peanut butter much more easily.

If you're not familiar with agave, it's a wonderful thing. It's all natural and doesn't change the taste of whatever you're putting it in. Plus, since it's liquid, it dissolves in beverages much more easily than sugar. If you choose to use honey instead, crank your oven up to 350ºF. I reduced my temperature because my research told me agave burns faster than honey. Word of advice: always know your ingredients when making substitutions. This includes the ratio of substitution (honey and agave are 1:1).

 This is the whey protein we use. It's nothing but pure protein and tastes like nothing at all. We buy it in bulk from Amazon and add it to many "regular" things (smoothies, yogurt, milk).

Once incorporated, stir in cooled oats. Press into a 9"x13" baking dish and bake for 20-22 minutes. Allow to cool and cut into desired size bars (we cut into 12).

I found this mixture to be very sticky. Once I dumped it into the baking pan, I wet my hands to spread out the "batter" with my fingers. Much easier and cleaner than trying to spread it with my spatula!

The end result.

The only thing not clean about this recipe is the chocolate chips. If you would like to keep this recipe 100% clean, either omit them, replace them with something else, or use grain sweetened chocolate chips.

Our opinion of these is that as far as protein bars go, these are pretty good. I'm not going to run and tell the neighbors we've got a sweet treat for them to try after dinner tonight, but I would definitely not call these a bust at all. I will probably try to tweak some things to make them better, but for now, they get the job done, are filling, and are pretty tasty! 

Sugar and sprinkles

Well, I thought I would be posting about our move before I got to any of my kitchen adventures, but as it turns out, unpacking and redecorating is far less entertaining than baking. So this what you get for now!

I was absolutely itching to get back into the kitchen. I packed up all of my baking ingredients and supplies a few weeks before we moved, so I would be forced to pack and clean and not be distracted by confections. What do you know, I was baking just two days after this move, and we made sure that the kitchen was one of the first things that got done. A family made up of a great cook and a great baker needs a kitchen. We didn't even have our bed fully assembled before we were back at the stove and oven!

If you've been keeping up with our blog, you'll know that I am challenging myself to a new baking adventure at least once a month. I knew exactly what I wanted to do first, and that was roll-out sugar cookies. You might think these are easy. You might think these are no big deal. But I was determined to find the perfect recipe. And by perfect I mean not too sweet, not too salty, easy to handle, something that didn't need to be refrigerated, and that had a great texture (sturdy but soft in the middle). I tried several recipes. Some I never even rolled out and attempted to cut because I just didn't even like the taste. I had one that I absolutely loved, but when I went to roll it out, it was a sticky, buttery mess. That was just not going to fly.

So I contacted my friend Sarah from Infinite Sweets. You might recognize her as the amazing baker who did our wedding cake and cupcakes! Sarah is a good friend of ours from Millersville, and I am so thankful she lets me bug her about everything baking. She has saved me several times with just a suggestion or a mini-lesson through text message. I told her what I wanted, what I was struggling with, and she helped me figure out what I needed to change. She seriously saved me on this one!

This is the point at which I wish I could share my recipe. The fact of the matter is that I don't quite have a concrete one. It's slightly vague, but that's kind of how I do my recipes. All of them are written down, but they all have notes scribbled in the margins. A few of them are in my head. And a handful of them, I do by feel with a written recipe as a guide. Also, I have started adapting some recipes to measure ingredients by weight, because it is so much more efficient and accurate.

What I can tell you is that I replaced the granulated sugar in a recipe I really enjoyed with approximately 2.5x the powdered sugar. Then, when I added the flour, I scaled back and added it back in little by little until it felt right. That seemed to do the trick with making the dough less sticky, more manageable, and it still tasted great. I will work on putting that jumbled description into something comprehensible outside of Lynn's brain... Hahaha.

Nonetheless, I of course had a blast taking pictures of what I ended up decorating with royal icing. Royal icing and I are old friends since I've been there done that with cake decorating! I was happy to be able to combine and old skill with a new one to check my first conquest off of my list!

Ready to bake!

Experimenting with sprinkles in cookies. Umm... Terrific idea.

Shamrocks, for the season, of course.

More sprinkles...

And even more sprinkles! Because seriously, who doesn't love sprinkles??

I'm calling this challenge a success. 

Maybe now I'll unpack more boxes...

Maybe.

Life pre-white walls

PHEW! What an absolute whirlwind past month we've had! I will have to share our most recent huge event (the move) in a later post when we have some more things in order around here and pictures will look nicer.

I promised a post about the Colemans' visit. Once they got here, we had a fantastic visit! But let's back up a little bit... They were set to arrive very early in the morning on Thursday, February 13th. If you recall, that was right smack dab in the middle of Pax, that wonderful snowstorm we had that only lasted about a half a day but pounded us with a ton of snow. Yeah, that one. I was texting with McKenna all day on Wednesday as she was keeping me updated on the changes in their flight out here from Vegas. To make a very, very, very long story short... They miraculously arrived here only a couple hours later than they were supposed to around 8:00am on Thursday, in a blizzard, and somehow, someway, were able to get all the way to Harrisburg from Philly (a 2 hour car ride) somewhere around the 3pm timeframe. It was a long, stressful day of just even following and keeping up with their schedule, I don't know how they lasted the whole way without ripping their hair out!

Thursday, Matt and I both were home from work, so we used the day to pack up our apartment. I took some breaks to take snowy pictures-- the last ones at our "old" place!

And the next morning... Work was delayed a few hours, so I was able to enjoy the sun and snow together. So beautiful!

Matt and I decided to head to my parents' house on Friday night (Valentine's Day) for our Saturday morning plans with the Colemans since we were getting even MORE snow that night. It turned out to be a really great decision, because I think we ended up with about another 3" overnight. Of course, I took some pictures of that snow as well...

Matt reunited with his friend Igor, my parents' cockatiel. Seriously, they love each other.

And I couldn't pass up this photo opportunity...

After some hanging around with just my parents, first up on the agenda was hanging with the Colemans and my parents. We stayed there for awhile and Sawyer was really into the fish tank. This was him the first time around. We did come back to my parents' house a few hours later and he was completely enthralled by this thing! He was telling Matt all about it, too. More specifically, he was really into the "boo" fish and kept telling Matt that the fish was "hiding" behind the rocks. It kept him entertained for quite some time.

First stop on the outing was Chocolate World! We were backseat buddies with Sawyer, so I went in for the selfie. It turns out almost 2 year olds don't know you're supposed to look at the camera lens during a selfie with a pull-out screen and not actually the screen. Oh well... Perhaps he will learn someday soon.

When we got to Chocolate World, we of course, had to take a best friend pic. Snowy hoods and all. 

And this moment right here melted my heart into a drippy mess. Not just because of the glimpse into my future, but because the husband I love so much is involved in this mutual adoration with the child who is the product of my very best friend. Watching this relationship develop is just the greatest thing. Watch out, future April babies... You're going to kill me with cuteness and I can already not even handle it.

Once we got into Chocolate World, we took quite the walk around some major construction they're going through to make the place look all kinds of different. We were up on the eating balcony looking down on the chocolate/dessert shops, and Sawyer really wanted everyone's attention. He was shouting "he-WOOO!" in the most adorable "pay attention to me" beckon you've ever heard. It was hilarious. I wish I had taken a video.

Apparently, I didn't take any pictures on the ride itself, as I had an adorable little boy sitting on my lap. I'm hoping McKenna has those pictures... But now I'm wondering if she doesn't since her phone got stolen. This is a sentence I probably could delete and text her about, but it's better this way. Stream of consciousness, right??

After the ride, we ate some of the delicious cookies we bought. This is what you get when you ask an almost 2 year old to smile and say "cheese" with a mouthful of cookie. Adorable.

A little Coleman family pic, if you will.

And a little boy who can't decide which hat he wants to wear!

After Hershey, we went back to my parents' house for a couple hours, ate some lunch, watched some more fish swim, tickled, played hide-and-seek, and rounded up lots of stuffed animals. It was really a great time... And we did a lot of laughing at Sawyer's cuteness. Have I mentioned this kid is adorable?

After that, Chris's family had so graciously invited us to dinner at a local hibachi restaurant. They invited us because I have "always been like family." Well isn't that just the sweetest? If your best friend's husband's family thinks that way of you, you've got it pretty good. We had a delicious dinner, also which McKenna took pictures of... Status of said pictures is still pending...

Post dinner, we did some general hanging at Chris's parents' house, and of course, had to do some photo sessions. This is what I got when I set up the self timer before everyone was ready. Thank you, Matty, McK, and Sawyer for being somewhat ready. I do very much appreciate the outcome (thank you, specifically, senior picture pose via McKenna). 

Self timer with an almost 2 year old. We won't discuss how creepy Sawyer looks here...

He's the next Beethoven. He will tell you. No, really... We taught him that name at my parents' house!

A selfie with Annie, Chris's niece. She has mastered the lens look, so there's hope for Sawyer...

After many, many failed attempts to get a picture with McKenna and Sawyer, we opted for the best friend photo again. You can never have too many of those. 

And you can CERTAINLY not have too many photos where there was major miscommunication about what was going to happen in the photo. This is a new fav, to say the least!

And a huge thanks to Matt for capturing this moment. I love it.

We had a really wonderful visit with the Colemans and are looking forward to seeing them again in a few weeks when we are out west for our big vacation! We can hardly wait to get the trip started!

Another really cool thing about that weekend was that we got to see Matt's best friend Derek's new babies, Ben and Gabby. Derek's children are also like a "niece" and "nephews" to us, so it was neat we got to see all 4 of those cuties in one weekend. With the Colemans living so far away, that probably won't ever happen again! The twins were born on January 13th, so they were only about 4 weeks old when we went to see them. So so so tiny, and so so so cute. We loved seeing them!

And a selfie with Matthew, Derek's 17 month old.

To round out the excitement of life before the big move, I participated in my 3rd annual Sweat-a-fit, benefiting the Boys & Girls Club of Lancaster. This was the 4th year the event occurred, but we were in Utah for Trevor and Stef's wedding last year, so I was unable to go. SAF is an 8 hour long event, offering spin, yoga, pilates, or Zumba classes on the hour every hour. I am on a team called No Pressure, and this was the first year I did all spin classes (the previous years, I threw in a yoga or Zumba to stretch my legs a bit). It was exhausting, but I'm glad I stuck with spin all day. I wasn't too terribly tired when it was over, but holy moly, did my feet hurt. I still have a bruised big toe that will be lasting awhile until it grows out... All worth it though!

For the glory...

For the new shirt...

And for the calories burned, haha.

Really though, it is such a fun event, and my team went for the 3-peat in winning the most hours participated! I hope to be able to participate again next year, and we will strive for the 4-peat! If you're brave enough to try it out, let me know. I will make sure you get signed up on the best team!

If you've lasted with me this long, congratulations! You're all caught up. And a really great friend for hanging in there... :-)

Next up on the blog is all about the move and my first baking encounter in our new kitchen. I tackled roll-out sugar cookies, and I won. I am so pumped, I wanted to do cartwheels in the kitchen. Lucky for me, it's big enough for me to do so now... So I might just do one next time I'm in there in honor of my conquest.