Nut-Free Paleo Chewy Granola Bars
February 16, 2013 in Nut-Free Baking, Snack Bars, Snacks
Ask and ye shall receive. Well, if you’re my sister-in-law–who e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago with a plea for help. She needed a granola bar recipe that was gluten-free, nut-free, and dairy-free to go to a nut-free school with her daughters and accommodate her daughters’ food sensitivities. (Clearly, any recipe I come up with will be grain-free too.) Oh, and her kids don’t like dates or raisins. Did I have anything that would work? Erm.
So, I set to work and came up with this recipe. Given how quickly each iteration of this recipe was devoured, they’re obviously kid-approved.  Inspiration comes from many places for me (pleas for help being one of them). I’ve actually had many requests for more nut-free treats like these, either for those of you with nut allergies or for those of you with kids who go to nut-free school or classrooms. So, it’s good to get the occasional motivation to create something new like this. And, while I can’t develop brand new recipes for every special request, I guess if you’re related to me, you can go ahead and make elaborate recipe requests. 
If you want to change up the flavors here, you could use your favorite dried fruit or add some fun spices. But, I do have to warn you that my husband used the P-word to describe these (Perfect).
I cut these into 16 squares. If you want to cut into rectangles to be more granola-bar like, if would make about 10.
Ingredients:
- 2 Eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 1Tbsp Honey
- 1/2 cup finely Shredded Unsweetened Coconut
- 1/2 cup Pepitas (Shelled Pumpkin Seeds)
, chopped
- 1/3 cup Sunflower Seeds
- 3 Tbsp Sesame Seeds
- 1/3 cup Dried Apricots, chopped
- 1/3 cup Dried Cranberries, chopped
- 1/4 cup dairy-free mini chocolate chips (I used Enjoy Life brand)
- 1/2 cup Flaked Coconut (aka coconut chips) , chopped
- Pinch Salt
- Pinch Cinnamon
- Grease a 9″x9″ pan with coconut oil or palm shortening. Â Preheat oven to 350F.
- Coconut flakes should be chopped to the size of large flakes of oatmeal. Pepitas should be chopped to roughly the size of sunflower seeds. Â Apricots and cranberries should be chopped to the size of raisins or slightly smaller.
- Â Optional: Â toast chopped flaked coconut in a skillet over medium-high heat for 6-7 minutes, until lightly browned.
- Â Blend eggs, honey, salt and cinnamon to completely combine (about 20 seconds).
- Â Combine all the dry ingredients. Â Pour blended eggs over and mix to fully combine. Â Pour into pan and press down evenly.
- Â Bake for 18 minutes. Â Let cool completely then cut into bars or squares.
These look great. I love all the different seeds!
These look great! One of the hardest nutrition challenges we have is finding portable snack foods. On another note, I was listening to one of your podcasts in which you talked about eating beef heart sausage for breakfast. I heart heart, and I am also trying to get more organ meats into my diet. Do you order this on line, or get it from a local butcher? I’ve looked at Whole Foods and on line at US Wellness Meats and I have not seen anything like that available. I’d like to find something like this as I cannot eat eggs due to AI issues. Thanks!
Both. Tropical Traditions sells trimmed and sliced beef heart in 1 lb packages.
Very ripe bananas would probably work for this.
any chance this will work with egg free substituents?
Probably depends on what substitute you use.
They look great! I’m wondering what brand of dried cranberries you use. Every one I look at has added sugar in the ingredients list.
It’s hard to find unsweetened dried cranberries. I use Trader Joe’s organic dried cranberries, which are sweetened.
So you must grind the hearts and make your own sausage? Do you just use 100% heart and spices?
If I grind whole heawt, I don’t. But if I have trimmed heart, then I do add some fat, Typically suet or pork fat.
I tried your other recipe for granola bars and they were a big hit! I love having a treat in the freezer and they are really filling! looking forward to trying these too! Thanks for the awesome info!
Oh awesome! Gluten free, dairy free, and nut free is perfect for me. Thanks!
What would you use to replace the eggs with? Chia egg? zucchini puree?
How many do these make?
Thanks!
I typically use 1Tbs milled flaxseed + 3Tbs water stirred and let sit for 3-5 minutes (per egg) . I would love to hear other suggestions as this doesn’t always work perfectly. HTH.
We learned that my son is allergic to peanuts and tree-nuts. Because of the tree-nut allergy the doctor also told us to stay away from all seeds (i.e., sunflower, poppy, sesame, etc.). These look great because we are looking for nut-free snacks, we’ll just leave out the seeds. Thanks for your great recipes!!!
Finally made these yesterday
. I couldn’t find cranberries without added sugar, is there such a thing? I ended up getting figs instead. They are really good but I think the cranberries would be better, I’ll keep looking. The kids really love them, thank you so much for posting this.. They aren’t huge fans of bars made with “dates” and love all of the seeds. I used the extra to make up a trail mix for them to take to school for snacking.
It’s very hard to find cranberries without sugar. I used ones from Trader Joe’s which have sugar but less than some of the other brands.
Thanks, I’ve been planning to check TJs out, gives me an excuse
Also, FYI, in case anyone is interested
, I put mine into 12 muffin tins instead of a 9×9 pan (couldn’t find mine! Ha!) and it worked out beautifully! Perfect portions.
Glad your sister in law asked you for your advice
I’ve always been a big fan of granola bars and such but stopped eating them because of a gluten intolerance. I’m almost through the 8 weeks of the paleo meal plan (http://timreviews.com/paleo-recipe) and I started to collect some great recipes from your blog for future reference. I almost lost 12 pounds 
Thank you so much! My stomach has been bothering me yet again these days, and I’ve been thinking its over-consumption of nuts! This is great – I can’t wait to try it it looks delicious!
Has anyone happened to work out fat/carb/protein for this?
First…I have stalked this blog for recipes for a long time now. Second…We are secretly BFF’s
I brag about you to everyone. Third….while I find most of your recipes to be some of the best around these take it up a notch. I struggle with trying to keep my 19 month old paleo because of all the pressure from other people around us. This gives me a treat I can give her without people thinking “Oh, here she goes again with that wacky food thing she does” AND she LOVES them. As do anyone else who tries them. I have had to link to this recipe half a dozen times now because people keep asking me for it! I recently dehydrated some blueberries and bananas and used those in lieu of the cranberries and apricots. DELICIOUS!!! And I love knowing there is no added sugar in the fruit. I will be buying apricots to dehydrate and when I see cranberries I will do those too but to anyone who has a dehydrator I highly, highly recommend the blueberry/banana combo!
These seed bars are fantastic! My whole family loved them. I didn’t have any sesame seeds on hand, so I used chia seeds instead. Still came out yummy.