Apricot Power Bars are a great grab and go breakfast or the perfect pick me up on the way home from the gym. Kid-friendly (with white chocolate) and Paleo-friendly (with dark chocolate, or no chocolate at all) I’ve made these gluten free bars each and every way.
I used white chocolate chips from my local Whole Foods when I made these for the boys. The chips come in a little unmarked plastic tub –sorry I don’t have more info on that. If you’d like to find out more you can try calling the Whole Foods in my neighborhood (it’s actually called Ideal Market and is the smallest Whole Foods in the country) at 303-443-1354.
Apricot Power Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup dried apricots
- 2 cups pecans
- 2 large eggs
- ¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup chocolate chips of your choice, or none whatsoever
Instructions
- Place apricots and pecans in a food processor and pulse until the texture of coarse gravel
- Pulse in eggs, salt and vanilla, until mixture forms a ball
- Remove mixture from food processor and work in chocolate chips
- Place mixture in a greased 8 x 8 inch baking dish
- Bake for 25 minutes at 350°F
- Cool and serve
I love apricots because they are just a bit lower on the glycemic index than other dried fruits. Further, they’re high in vitamin A, vitamin C, tryptophan and full of good fiber.
If you’re looking for more ways to get your daily dose of apricots and gluten free cake is your thing, try my magically moist Cherry Apricot Cake recipe. Or, if candy is what you’ve got a hunkering for, check out these Cranberry Apricot Truffles (one of my all time favorite gluten free recipes).
Here are some more gluten free treats made with apricots that you might like:
-Apricot jam with noyaux, spices and bourbon by Sean of Hedonia
-Simple Roasted Apricots with Honey Mascarpone by Joy of Joy The Baker
–Thumbjams by Dan of Renegade Kitchen
Lauren says
These are amazing!! I also tried adding less almonds and added oats and raisins for more of a fruit bar vs. nut bar and they were delicious!! Great post!!!
Pam says
I made a batch without any chocolate and ran the nutritional information on the whole batch. I cut into 8 bars, so here’s the breakdown I got for 1/8 of the batch (again – just pecans, apricots, eggs, vanilla, salt, NO chocolate).
250 calories
19 g fat
17 g carbs (12 g sugar, 4 g fiber)
4 g protein
Depending on the resource I used for nutritional info, each bar also has 5-10% of your daily value requirements of iron and magnesium. Other vitamins and micronutrients were 0-2% DV.
Lisa says
Just made these and they are AWESOME!!!
Thank you!
Lisa
Alex says
Love this!! Any thoughts on a substitute for the nuts as we have allergies in our house? Would a seed work??
Sinead says
Any alternative to dry fruit in this? Would flaxseeds or almond flour work?
Gayle says
Has anyone tried substituting pecans with a different sort of nut?
Is the texture and taste still alright?
Athena says
I’ve made these a few times and they are great. I bake and cool them, cut into bars and then melt the chocolate, spread on top of each bar and then refrigerate.
Bonnie Brown says
Enjoy your posts and recipes so much! Today, we’re serving the GF Apricot Energy bars at a community healthy food party, and I came back to the website hoping to find the nutritional content. I see that it has A, C, tryptophan, and fiber; but I’d like to be able to share specifics on this and other recipes.
elana daley says
so I’ve now indoctrinated so many friends with this recipe however I changed it as I am a consummate non conformist. instead of using dried apricots the first time, i used fresh because that’s what I had. It required an increase of nuts, so I added 2 cups of my homemade trail mix in addition to the recipe…which also includes dried cranberries. the next time I played and instead of using dried apricots, I used dried peaches. My next adventure will be to use dried apples and continue in that way. Each time I change the recipe it gets more fun and easy.
Thanks for always setting me on a new path of creativity.
Jess says
YUM! These are like cookie bars. You’ll have a hard time convincing yourself that they are pretty healthy. I used almonds in place of pecans (because I didn’t have any pecans) and liked it. I also used Ener-G Egg Replacer. I’m sure real eggs work best, but the replacer definitely worked for me. Definitely a keeper! Thanks, Elana!