This is a nut bar I’ve been making to send to my son who is deployed overseas. It uses macadamia nuts, pecans, desiccated coconut, and half of a Lakanto chocolate bar. The whole mix is held together with a caramel syrup made from allulose and butter. I was inspired to make this after researching energy bars (which had too many carbs from pumpkin and sunflower seeds) and a nut brittle recipe from Ketogenic Girl’s website - google “Ketogenic Girl Nut Brittle with Chocolate”
This is my latest iteration:
Macadamia Pecan Caramel Energy Bars
280 g toasted Macadamia Nuts chopped
140 g toasted Pecans chopped
50 g desiccated coconut lightly toasted
1/2 Lakanto chocolate bars chopped fine to mix in and melt into the mix (will melt into the mix when the hot brittle mix is added) - you could probably just use powdered cocoa powder if you don’t have a suitable chocolate bar.
Salt to taste
Mix together in a large bowl
Caramel syrup:
1 cup granulized allulose (about 180 g)
1 stick of butter (125 g)
1/2 cup water
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda ( I think this makes the syrup brittle so you could leave this out if you want more of a chewy bar)
Cook the syrup ingredients in a fairly large saucepan stirring frequently until the mixture turns to a caramel brown color. This mixture bubbles and froths a lot so use a good sized saucepan and keep your eye on it and stir frequently. Allulose does not burn easily ( unlike sugar which can burn in an instant) so it’s fairly forgiving but still stand over it and stir to prevent boiling over. It might take 10-20 minutes to reach the caramel stage.
Allow the mixture to cool and add the vanilla and if desired, the baking soda. The mixture will froth and bubble with these additions. Pour the mixture into the nuts and stir thoroughly, You can then spread the mixture into a parchment lined cookie sheet and allow to cool or weigh the finished mixture and divide into equal parts and portion into a bar tray. Press the mixture firmly into the tray so that each bar is nice and compact – as the mixture cools this becomes more and more difficult. I used a spoon and pressed heavily with my thumbs.
My mixture weighed about 800 g so I portioned it into eight 100g bars
Hope you enjoy this recipe and do make comments if you can think of “improvements”