How to Cook Vegan: Date Bars

By Published On: 20 January 2015Last Updated: 23 January 2017

Date bars are so simple to make it's embarrassing. I'm no genius and this is no special vegan food hack but it will give you the basis for making your own snack bars (so you can finally stop shelling out anywhere from $1.79 - $3.00 a piece for the store-bought ones).

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By KD Angle-Traegner, Founder & Editor

Generally speaking I like to cook and, when I’m not being lazy about it, I make all sorts of delightful things from scratch just because I can. I own a million cookbooks and must confess that I don’t take the time to pull them out as often as I could. Don’t get me wrong, vegan cookbooks are pretty to look at and can house some life-changing, crave-inducing recipes, and I totally use them for special meals, but most days I’m a throw-it-together-and-hope-it-tastes-good kind of girl. It’s great because I can make a meal out of nearly anything, but it’s also bad because I rarely eat the same thing twice because it’s hard to duplicate a recipe you never followed. You can make a similar meal, sure, but it’ll never be exact since I also don’t measure ingredients and rarely taste as I’m cooking. I know, you just want to run right over and eat dinner at my house, don’t you? I cook by scent and honestly, most of the time it works out just fine.

Generally speaking I like to cook and, when I’m not being lazy about it, I make all sorts of delightful things from scratch just because I can. I own a million cookbooks and must confess that I don’t take the time to pull them out as often as I could. Don’t get me wrong, vegan cookbooks are pretty to look at and can house some life-changing, crave-inducing recipes, and I totally use them for special meals, but most days I’m a throw-it-together-and-hope-it-tastes-good kind of girl. It’s great because I can make a meal out of nearly anything, but it’s also bad because I rarely eat the same thing twice because it’s hard to duplicate a recipe you never followed. You can make a similar meal, sure, but it’ll never be exact since I also don’t measure ingredients and rarely taste as I’m cooking. I know, you just want to run right over and eat dinner at my house, don’t you? I cook by scent and honestly, most of the time it works out just fine.

[Most of the time.]

Cooking, especially cooking vegan, can be intimidating to people if they’ve never done it before. I can remember back when I first started to learn how to cook as a vegan ten short years ago. Things were different then- very few vegan convenience foods existed. (And I had to walk uphill to school, both ways, in the snow- without boots.) What worked for me was understanding how ingredients and flavors worked together- this opened the door for me to explore endless combinations of foods. Sometimes I think learning the method of cooking vegan can be just as important as learning recipes. Take these date bars for example: I knew the general gist of how to make a date bar, so I threw a bunch of stuff in the food processor and made a batch.

vegan-date-bars

Sweet pitted dates, pecans, shredded coconut, chia seeds, and a few Enjoy Life Chocolate Chunks

Easy peasy. But when I posted the date bars to Instagram, so many people asked me for a recipe that I had wished that I wrote down a recipe. Since I didn’t, I thought I’d do the next best thing and offer up my method in case it could be useful to someone. Once you learn the method of how to make a date bar, you can make a date bar that is tailored to your taste-buds. Honestly this is less method than I’m making it out to be, date bars are so simple to make it’s embarrassing. I’m no genius and this is no special vegan food hack, but it will give you the basis for making your own snack bars (so you can finally stop shelling out anywhere from $1.79 – $3.00 a piece for the store-bought ones).

You’ll need a food processor. Dump the amount of dates (use either sweet pitted dates or medjool dates) you’re using into the food processor and give it a few pulses until the dates are in small pieces. The more you pulse the dates, the stickier and pastier they become. After you get the dates into small pieces, add the rest of the ingredients of your choice and pulse until it looks like this:

vegan-date-bars

Pour the date crumble into a glass baking dish and press until compacted into an even layer. Place in the fridge overnight to set. The next day you can cut them into any size bars you’d like. Easy, right? So easy.

Need some inspiration? I’ve made date bars using various combinations of these ingredients:

  • Dried Fruit: Raisins, Plums, Cranberries, Goji Berries, Blueberries, Cherries, or Figs
  • Nuts: Cashews, Walnuts, Macadamia Nuts, Brazil Nuts, Peanuts, Pecans or Coconut
  • Seeds: Pumpkin, Sunflower, Chia, or Hemp
  • Chocolate

The possibilities are seriously endless.

vegan-date-bars-4

If winging it doesn’t sound like fun and you really want a recipe, and since I don’t have one to give you, here’s one to get you started: Super Food Energy Bars with Cacao from This Rawsome Life. 

Do you have a favorite date bar recipe? Tell me in the comments!

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HELLO! I'm KD Angle-Traegner.

Writer, activist, and founder of Four Urban Paws Sanctuary. I’m on a mission to help people live a vegan life. Read more about KD…

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