Homemade Protein Bars

If you remember my post about Diet Freezer cooking, I said I was going to try to make some homemade Strawberry Banana meal replacement bars for us to eat.  I found this recipe online and it looked pretty easy so I decided to try it.

Ingredients:
1 cup oatmeal
5 scoops protein powder (I used unflavored)
¼ cup Fat Free Cream Cheese
2 Egg Whites
¼ cup Almond Milk
¾ mashed Banana plus an equal amount of pureed strawberries
2 tsp Canola Oil

First I mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl, the fruit in one bowl and the remaining liquids in another.

I dumped the strawberry and banana in my Blendtec and let it puree the fruits for me to make a nice smooth consistency.

Then I dumped all the ingredients into my KitchenAid and let it mix everything up for me.

Once it was a nice smooth mixture I spread it into a greased 8” x 8” pan and put it into the oven.  When they came out I just let them cool and cut them into equal sized bars.

I was pretty excited since they seemed firm enough to be very portable just like a store-bought bar except without all the preservatives and junk in them.  I could control EXACTLY what nutrients I was getting out of it.  Once they were cool, I excitedly took my first bite…

THEY’RE DISGUSTING!!

LOL.  How disappointing.  The banana isn’t enough of a sweetener and you can barely even taste the strawberry.  They taste like dense, dry, blandness – barely better than just eating plain dry oats and flour.   LOL.  Well that was fun…

There were a ton of recipes for no-bake chocolate peanut butter meal replacement bars so I’m thinking they may come out better since there are so many variations out there.  I haven’t given up on making meal replacement bars yet but I guess it’s going to take longer than I thought to find one that’s both nutritious and palatable.  Haha.