Caramel Cookie Bar
What do you call a cookie that requires no baking and is in a rectangular shaped? We are going to call it a bar. Our Caramel Cookie Bar has a crunchy texture, chocolate chips and the natural sweetness of dates. What holds this all so perfectly together without the need for baking is our Creamy Cashew Butter with Caramel and Sea Salt.
Is this a candy bar or a healthy snack bar? That depends on how you define each term. The packaged snack bars widely available at grocery stores are themselves walking the line between candy or healthy snack. Nutritionally speaking, we offer the guideline for a bar to be considered a snack and not candy: It must have fiber, no added sugar and limited amount of saturated fat.
At first glance, the ingredients of the caramel cookie bar recipe fit the snack bar definition. It gets a little murky when the chocolate chips are added. The bar has the naturally occurring fiber in dates. Cashew butter has a healthier fat profile. Rice cereal is added in for crunch, choosing a brown rice cereal adds in more fiber and decreases the possibility of added sugar.
Indeed, this bar is a cross between a cookie and a snack bar. The simplicity of few ingredients without the addition of added sugar makes this bar a winner in our book! It is also vegan, if the chocolate chips are vegan, and gluten free. Try a version without the chocolate chips, adding raisins or dried cranberries instead.
Our Chocolate Hazelnut Granola Bars are another gourmet dessert like bar, while our Crunchy Peanut Butter and Oats bar is a midday snack bar. Try one of our bar recipes and comment below them with your version of the recipes. Don’t forget you can rate our recipes using the 5-stars on the upper left corner of the recipe cards.
Category
Snacks
Servings
4 people
Author:
Carolina Jantac, MS, RD, LD
A delicious snack bar made with just a few simple ingredients where all the flavor of our Once Again Cashew Butter is perfection! A gluten free and vegan bar you can make in just a few minutes. So good it tastes like dessert.

Ingredients
-
½ cup of Once Again Creamy Cashew Butter with Caramel and Sea Salt
- 15 pitted dates
- 1 ½ cup of brown rice cereal
- ¼ cup of mini-chocolate chips
- ¼ cup of chopped cashews
Directions
- Start by soaking dates in warm water for fifteen minutes. Drain and place in your food processor.
- Pulse until achieving a paste-like consistency. Add cashew butter with caramel and sea salt and pulse until well combined.
- Lastly add in cereal, chocolate chips, and cashews, and only pulse two to three times to combine. The crunchiness of the cereal should be intact for best results.
- Prepare a 9x4 loaf pan with parchment paper and place the mixture on it. With a hard spatula or hands, press it down to flatten and cover the pan.
- Place it in the freezer for just twenty minutes to set. Remove and slice into 7 bars and enjoy! Store in the refrigerator in airtight container for up to five days.
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