Homemade Clif Bars (Vegan and Gluten Free)

Homemade Clif Bar recipe.  When I made my Healthy Cookie Dough Bites the other day, I thought the flavors would be a great base for Homemade Clif Bars.

So, I set out to create them.  A lot of readers lately have been asking if Clif bars are okay to eat.  I used to but them by the case as well.  I would take them to work in the days when I waited tables on the Las Vegas strip.

Here are the ingredients to the Chocolate Chip Peanut bar that I got off their website:

Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch:

Organic Brown Rice Syrup, ClifPro® (Soy Rice Crisps [Soy Protein Isolate, Rice Flour, Barley Malt Extract], Organic Soy Flour, Organic Roasted Soybeans), Organic Rolled Oats, Organic Toasted Oats (Organic Oats, Organic Dried Cane Syrup, Ascorbic Acid, Natural Vitamin E [Antioxidant]), Organic Cane Syrup, Organic Peanut Butter (Organic Peanuts, Salt), Chocolate Chips (Dried Cane Syrup, Unsweetened Chocolate, Cocoa Butter, Soy Lecithin, Vanilla Extract), Peanut Flour, Peanuts, ClifCrunch® (Organic Oat Fiber, Apple Fiber, Inulin [Chicory Extract], Psyllium, Organic Milled Flaxseed), Organic Date Paste, Natural Flavors, Sea Salt.

Wow!  That’s a lot of ingredients!  Soy protein isolate is a hidden form of MSG.  There are also “natural flavors” in these.  Those two things alone would make me put these back on the shelf nowadays.  So, moving on to my homemade clif bars.

My homemade clif bar recipe is great because it serves as a good base for you to add whatever kind of flavors you like.

 

Homemade Clif Bars

 

These would go great with a glass of Homemade Almond Milk.

Homemade Clif Bars

Homemade Clif Bars

Prep Time 10 min Cook Time 20 min

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 325.
  2. Grind up the oats and almonds in the food processor .
  3. When they have a crumbly consistency, add the dates and coconut.
  4. Lastly add the water slowly as you pulse the ingredients together until a batter forms. It will be thick and sticky.
  5. Line an 8X8 pan with parchment paper leaving enough paper sticking out on each side so you will be able to lift the whole thing out when done.
  6. Working carefully, spread batter evenly out to all the sides.
  7. Press mixture down with a spatula to get it firm.
  8. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes.
  9. Let cool completely before removing intact.
  10. Cut bars with a pizza cutter .

by

Subscribe
Join more than 35,000 subscribers and start gettiing free recipes direct to your inbox!

You may also like

194 thoughts to “Homemade Clif Bars (Vegan and Gluten Free)”

  1. Made these (but with cashews as that's what I had a ton of) & they are amazing. Perfect alternative to a protein shake for breakfast on way to work. Thanks!
      1. Holy Smokes! No WONDER this are so good. Here's the macronutrient breakdown for 8 bars per the recipe: 356.5 calories 16.5 g fat 2.6 sat .3 poly .3 mono 1.5 g sodium 582.8 g potassium 51.7 carbs 7.9 fiber 35.5 sugar 8.3 protein
      2. Not sure how you're getting calories in the 300's. 16 Dates- 880 calories 1 cup almonds-700 calories 1 cup oats- 300 calories .5 cup shredded coconut- 267 calories =2147 calories 2147/8= 268 calories which is about the amount in a clif bar.
        1. Well with the ingredients I'm using by measuring adding everything and then dividen it by eight and my the calories I had at the end where 190.3?
    1. Hi Lisabee! Thank you! My account accidentally got flagged as spam on Pinterest. It's happening to a lot of bloggers lately. I have put 2 emails into them and I am waiting for them to fix it. :( Thanks for your patience!
  2. I accidentally made too many (thought we were going on a road trip with another family which got cancelled). How long do they keep, and can I freeze them?
  3. After looking at a few recipes, I am going to try this one, thank you for sharing. I will be using steel-cut oats and cinnamon, maybe even a bit of dehydrated banana peel (for serotonin, etc). I like that these are baked, can't wait to make them, maybe next week. Thanks, and Blessings!
  4. Looking forward to making these as to take to classes with me this term. I'm going to experiment with adding protein powder. Have you tried anything like that before? Do you have any suggestions as far as a starting point?
    1. I haven't tried adding protein powder, but maybe start with a couple tablespoons? You may need to add a little more liquid to balance out the dry ingredients though.
  5. It is great to see that people out there are finding ways to make homemade healthy products by trying to replicate a retail shelf item. For the Clif Bar substitute that you present here, I have 1) comments on my attempt to make it, 2) a question about your recipe and 3) to correct an important error in a statement made about protein. 1) My wife found this recipe and asked me to make it so she could try it. It is very easy and very quick to make. More important is that she likes it. I cut mine into 9 bars so that I could get close to Clif Bar’s 240 to 260 calories per bar. I saw that the fat in Clif Bars ranged from 3.5g to 8g. Your recipe came in at 12.3g. The sodium in Clif Bars ranged form 120mg to 200mg. Your recipe came in at only 4mg. Both recipes had sugars in the 22g range. And finally, for protein, the Clif Bars ranged from 8g to 10g while your recipe had about 6g. Not giving either recipe the benefit of the doubt, I assumed that the protein in both would not be considered complete proteins, and therefore decided to add ½ cup of a soy protein powder (all-natural, non-GMO, minimally processed, low–heat, non-sweetened, nothing artificial, complete with all essential amino acids) to bump the total protein in a bar to about 10g. 2) After following your recipe, the one I made was much lighter in color than the one you picture. I was wondering it the size of the dates I got from the local bulk food store might be a lot smaller than the ones you used. When I weighed 17 dates, it total about 93 grams. Can you tell me what 17 of your dates weigh? 3) You stated, “Soy protein isolate is a hidden form of MSG.” This is an inaccurate statement. Just as it is hard to tell natural vitamin E from synthetic vitamin E, since there is only a one letter difference, the same goes for the amino acid glutamate/glutamic acid and MSG. There are 2 forms of glutamic acid, L-glutamic acid and D-glutamic acid. L-glutamic acid is one of the 22 known amino acids, but is one of the non-essential ones. It is very common in plants and animals. D-glutamic acid is artificially and chemically produced, and commonly known as MSG. It is not food, but rather a toxic concoction. L-glutamic acid from protein is harmless, but needed for many critical body functions. While MSG is 78% D-glutamic acid and contains some L-glutamic acid; but, soy protein only contains the L-glutamic acid form. Information on the internet is frequently flawed. Common documents incorrectly refer to chemical MSG as L-glutamate, when in fact it is D-glutamate. Notes: A. I used a selection of 6 different flavor Clif Bars in the comparisons. B. The soy protein powder is a product I sell as an independent distributor for a company with all-natural products going back 100 years as of 2015. While soy protein has been popular in the U.S. for a dozen years or so, our product was released in the 1960’s. C. While the Clif Bar protein is somewhat sourced through soy, not being minimally processed means that while the amino acids/proteins may be intact, the other plant nutrients, such as those that help women build hormones would have been destroyed. And the other sources of protein are not complete proteins.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *