Maple Oatmeal Cashew Bars

Last week, I told you all about my desire to use Pinterest for something more than visual eye candy and try my hand at the numerous DIY's and recipes I have on my boards. I started off by making homemade deodorant and trying the oil face cleanser method.

A quick review: A big THUMBS DOWN. I ended up breaking out a bit on my face, which I'm attributing to the cleanser, even if I can't be 100% sure that was the cause. But I'm pretty much 98% sure that was it. And while the deodorant worked fine during less-than-active times, I found myself a little too... fragrant... for my liking when moving about and working out. So I'm back to the aluminum-full clinical strength store-bought anti-perspiration, thankyouverymuch.

So it was a bit discouraging to start out with two strike-outs. But I soldiered on, and picked out these  maple cashew oatmeal bars from Tracy at Shutterbean for my next project.

This was a super simple recipe, with not much more to it than oats, cashews, dates, maple syrup, cinnamon and salt. The dates definitely gave my food processor a workout-- the whole machine was shaking like crazy and I thought it was going to weeble-wobble itself right off the counter.

After a few hours chilling in the freezer, here's how my version came out:



They really did taste like oatmeal cookie dough! They were pretty delicious, and I enjoyed snacking on them throughout the week. Mine didn't seem to be quite as blended or homogeneous as Tracy's version, but I attribute that to my food processor not being able to take the density of the dates, or maybe my dates were old. Nevertheless, it was a good recipe, and would be perfect for summer when you don't want to turn the oven on. Or when you want to avoid white flour or white sugar-- these babies are totally raw!