The Longest Run Bar Recipe

I was blessed this afternoon to hear my brother's voice (along with my darling niece and nephews shouts in the background) on the end of the line. We spent some time catching up because he's recently been out of the country.  He has a dream job working for Compassion, a non-profit that releases children from poverty through education and partnering them with sponsors around the globe and occasionally travels to places like Kenya, Australia, India, etc for site visits, to train people there.  (My life has been changed forever by my growing friendship with Anjali who we started sponsoring not too long ago.)  But, more on that later!

You're probably getting the impression that this brother of mine is pretty incredible.  You would be right.  After chatting, he began to tell a funny story about an ice-bath he took earlier today.  I reminded him he needed to post on his amazing blog The Longest Run, and then asked how far he went.  His answer?  20 MILES!  Despite having run my first marathon with him last year (which I still need to write a race report for) I couldn't believe it! His goal is to rock the socks of the infamous Leadville 100 the end of August and I hope to be by his side for at least part of it as a pacer. Me a pacer? Ridiculous?  Yes.  But you know how I like to try impossible things.

A race of this length requires serious fuel.  I've always found it difficult to find good snack food in general, but this presents an even more intense challenge.  While I'm intrigued by some of the treats elite marathon running Scott Jurek eats as well as those mentioned by Born to Run's Christopher McDougall, I'd like to be able to not only make my own, but make them out of common, healthy ingredients I already have at home.  Enter Passionate Homemaking's nourishing protein bars.

The original recipe came from Elana's Pantry, an excellent gluten-free blog that I'm loving, now that Phil is gluten-free.  It's been updated and tweaked and I decided to join in with some tweaks of my own, but I encourage you to check out the others as well.  I would like to dedicate this recipe to my brother and his Longest Run, as well as anyone else pursuing ultramarathoning or just running in general because we all need good natural food to fuel that one more step to the finish, no matter what our goal.  Sometimes my goal is just to make it through the afternoon at work without my office chair killing me!  In two weeks my goal will be 3.149...miles at UMC's Pi run. It will be the perfect run to get me back into hardcore training for August! (I hope:-)

The Longest Run Bars (Gluten-free, Dairy free)


Ingredients:
2 cups almonds
½ cup flax
½ cup shredded coconut (Unsweetened is best but I have a hard time finding it)
½ cup natural peanut butter (Next time I'll add almond butter to but I recently ran out)
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ cup coconut oil (The taste of this is so amazing!)
1-2 Tbs real maple syrup (I might add a little honey next time as well, or swap)
2-3 teaspoons gluten-free vanilla extract
1 bar dark chocolate 70% or greater (With Lindt, under 70% has dairy, you could easily use only half a bar or Nutella on a cheat day!
Some might say the chocolate is optional... not in this house though!


1. Add the flax first so that you can pulse it into a pulp in your food processor. (Don't have a food processor, check out this giveaway!)  This makes the nutrients available.
2. Add the almonds, coconut, nut butter and salt.  The longer you pulse the finer the almonds become.  If you prefer chunks of almonds then make sure not to pulse too long.
3. Melt coconut oil with syrup/honey and vanilla. Stir.
4.  Add to an 8 x 8 glass dish and press down evenly.
5. Chill until hard.  About 1 hour at least.
6. Melt chocolate.  I used 30 second intervals in the microwave, stirring in between.  
7.  Spread over bars and refrigerate until hard.  
8. Cut.  
9.  Eat or Freeze!  

I'm going to freeze some (if not from this batch then I'll make some more) for my hubby to snack on while he does his mail route.  I'll also experiment to see how long I can keep these in the office at work before they are devoured.  What do you think?  What modifications will you make?

This is my first recipe! Any suggestions?