These Healthy Strawberry Blonde Bars Are Too Good To Be Vegan and Gluten-Free

Yerin Kim
Updated
These fruity bars taste too good to be healthy

Dessert doesn’t always have to be a luxury reserved for special occasions—especially if you’re treating yourself to healthy sweets. The Healthy Convert ($13, amazon.com), a new cookbook by Nicole Maree (the genius behind Kayla Itsines’ The Bikini Body recipes), is packed with mouthwatering, diet-friendly dessert recipes. After years of dealing with digestion issues and food intolerances, Maree has finally mastered the art of converting her favorite treats into allergy-friendly alternatives. She shares her tried-and-true tips, offering plenty of creative substitutes to seemingly essential kitchen staples like sugar, eggs, and oil—the book even dedicates an entire chapter to must-have ingredients to create her health-packed desserts. As Maree would say, no one ever needs to miss out!

RELATED: This No-Bake Cheesecake Is Your New Go-To Dessert

Just because a dessert is dairy and gluten-free, it doesn’t mean it can't indulge your sweet tooth and this strawberry blonde bar recipe is a perfect example of that. Using sweet replacements like coconut, malt syrup, and dates, Maree’s version of this tasty dessert is sure to please any type of crowd.

Read on to find out how you can enjoy this deliciousness, minus the guilt.

Strawberry Blonde Bars

Yields: Makes 18 bars

Ingredients

  • 2 3/4 ounces medjool dates, pitted

  • 1/3 cup rice malt syrup

  • 1 3/4 ounces unsweetened desiccated (shredded) coconut

  • 6 ounces raw macadamia nuts

  • 6 buckwheat kernels

Directions

  1. Put the cashew nuts for the filling in a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Soak for 30 minutes.

  2. Line the base and sides of a 20 cm x 20 cm x 7 cm deep (8 in × 8 in × 2 3/4 in) square springform cake tin with baking paper, allowing the sides to overhang. Set aside.

  3. Blend the base ingredients and 30 ml (1 fl oz) water in your food processor until the mixture starts to come together. Press the mixture firmly into the base of your prepared tin. Freeze while you prepare the filling.

  4. Drain and rinse the cashew nuts very well. Blend the cashew nuts, rice malt syrup, coconut oil, coconut cream, lemon juice and vanilla in your food processor until silky smooth and well combined.

  5. Remove half the filling from the food processor and set aside. Add the strawberries to the food processor and blend until smooth. Pour the strawberry filling over the base and freeze for 1.5 hours.

  6. Once set, pour the remaining filling over the strawberry layer. Freeze for 1 hour.

  7. Before serving, sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Carefully remove from the cake tin and discard the baking paper.

  8. Cut into bars using a warm, sharp knife. Garnish each bar with a drizzle of melted coconut butter and chopped macadamia nuts. Decorate with a halved strawberry to serve.

  9. Store the remaining bars in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 1 month.

  10. FILLING

  11. 300 g (10 1/2 oz) raw cashew nuts

  12. 180 ml (6 fl oz) rice malt syrup

  13. 60 g (2 oz) coconut oil

  14. 400 ml (13 1/2 fl oz) tinned coconut cream

  15. 60 ml (2 fl oz / 1/4 cup) freshly squeezed lemon juice

  16. 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  17. 180 g (6 1/2 oz) fresh strawberries, hulled

  18. GARNISH

  19. 100 g (3 1/2 oz) coconut butter, melted

  20. 9 fresh strawberries, halved

  21. 20 g (3/4 oz) macadamia nuts, chopped

Cook's Notes:

You can use maple syrup in place of rice malt syrup.

Source:

Recipe excerpted with permission from The Healthy Convert by Nicole Maree, published by Hardie Grant Books September 2017, RRP $19.99 hardcover.