Ode to the Toffee Almond Bar & An Early Birthday Present

Here we are 2 weeks in advance of my birthday and a present has already arrived!  Being a cooking crazed girl I asked for a small food processor and the bf has delivered <3.  This calls for a celebration and my very fist post: The healthy toffee almond bar.


A few years ago this delicious bar cookie was available at Starbucks, but has since be discontinued.  It was a truly despairing moment when my favorite work day snack disappeared forever, but today it will be resurrected and reformed into a better being :).  Anyone who is looking for a tasty yet healthy version of the Starbucks toffee almond bar here its is, oh and its gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan too so just about anyone can eat it!


The original recipe includes lots of butter, white flour, and sugar weighing in at 430 Calories per small bar.  Plus each cookie included 21 grams of fat and 37 grams of sugar which is about 74% of the amount of sugar you should consume per day!  


My recipe still has a small serving size(16 servings), but that works for me because they are very sweet.  Each bar is 179.5 Calories and I haven't yet figured out how to determine the other nutrition facts, but at least I can say there is no added sugar or fat in these and nearly all the ingredients are healthy. 

Gather Ingredients

Healthy Toffee Almond Bars

1 cup almond meal

1 cup whole oats

10 Medjool dates pitted

3/4cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk

¼ tsp almond extract

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp amaretto (optional)

1 tbsp regular or sugar free caramel syrup (optional)

Grind Oats

1/3 cup chocolate chips or chunks

1/3 cup whole almonds

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1)      Grind oats in a food processor and then add almond meal and dates.  Grind these three ingredients until you get a dry and crumbly mix.  Try not to blend the dates away totally because they help to lend an extra toffee like taste.

Process Dry Ingredients

2)      Add liquid ingredients.  Process on high until a thick cookie dough like consistency is achieved, it took me about one minute.

3)      Preheat oven at 350.

4)      Prep an 8x8 square pan with a little cooking spray.

5)      Mix in chocolate chips and nuts.  Add salt, baking powder and baking soda at the last minute.  Spread cookie batter into the pan and bake for 10 mins.  Reduce heat to 300 and continue cooking for another 20 mins or until the top is very brown and the center feels soft, but set.

6)      Here comes the hard part!  Let them cool completely (this is so tough because the smell is intoxicating) and then slice into 16 bars.  Enjoy!

While cutting into the bars I was nervous because they felt a bit spongy like cake, but the texture turned out just fine in the end.  Also I left out any white chocolate chips just because they don't go over well at my house, but throw in an additional 1/3 cup of those if you like them.  The toffee flavor is a bit less than the original since this version is minus the caramel river running through the top and last, but not least next round I will add a  little imitation butter flavor just to make them taste a little more naughty ;).