No Bake Vegan Twix Bars
Source: http://www.healthfulpursuit.com/
Vegan and gluten-free Twix bars made with just 6 ingredients. No baking required!
Recipe type: Vegan, Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Refined sugar-free, Yeast-free, Corn-free, Grain-free
Prep time: 30 mins
Cook time: 1 hour
Total time: 1 hour 30 mins
Serves: 12
Ingredients
No bake shortbread:
1 cup (140 grams) raw macadamia nuts
¼ cup coconut nectar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Pinch sea salt
Caramel:
100 grams pitted medjool dates (approximately 6 dates)
3 tablespoons nut or seed butter – I used sunflower seed butter
Pinch sea salt
Water, optional
Chocolate coating:
¾ cup (150 grams) dairy-free chocolate chips, melted
Instructions
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
Begin by adding macadamia nuts to the bowl of your food processor and processing until ground. Pulse for best results and do not process too long or you’ll have nut butter! Check out the pictures below to see what I mean.
Add coconut nectar, vanilla and salt. Process for a couple more seconds, just until combined.
Scoop out about 1½ tablespoons at a time into your hand and roll into a ball. Slowly shape into a long tube by rolling back and forth between the palm of your hands until it’s about 3-inches long. Set down on prepared cookie sheet and flatten with fingers. You can make the cookie even straighter by using the side of a knife to press up against the edges.
Repeat with remaining dough, making 12 bars in total. Once complete, place in the freezer.
Place caramel ingredients in the bowl of your food processor. Process until smooth. You may have to add a drop or two of water to make smooth. I added a total of ½ teaspoon.
Remove the cookies from the freezer and top with caramel. To do so, roll caramel like you did the cookies; into 3-inch tubes, and place over top of cookies. Return to the freezer and allow to set for at least 30 minutes.
Melt chocolate chips by dropping into a metal bowl and place over top of a sauce pan filled with water. Bring water to a boil and stir chips until melted. Remove from heat.
Remove the cookie sheet from the freezer and; one by one, coat the bars in chocolate. To do this, drop the bar into the chocolate and coat it with your fingers. Remove access with your fingers and place back on the parchment.
Repeat with remaining cookies.
Place back in the freezer and allow to set overnight for best results.
Keep in the fridge or freezer until ready to serve.
I used mini chips so that they’d melt quicker.
Hey, it’s been 7 years since I had a Twix bar, I was a bit excited for it. The quicker the prep, the better!
Begin by processing the macadamia nuts. They should be ground to a fine powder without turning the nuts into nut butter. There’s a thin line between the two so make sure you don’t go over it!
Once the nuts are processed, add the rest of the shortbread ingredients and pulse.
I found it easiest to roll the dough in between my hands and then shape it on the cookie sheet like this:
Once you have 3-inch sections, you can push the side of a knife up against them to make them nice and flat and even like so…
Throw the cookies in the freezer while you work on the caramel. I used this same caramel for my caramel apple smoothie.
It should look something like this when it’s done…
Shape the caramel as you did the cookies – roll between your hands into a long tube, then shape onto the top of the cookies. Try to make the sides flush with sides of the cookie.
Throw them in the freezer again, this time for a little longer so that they’re easier to roll around in chocolate later.
At first, I was spooning the chocolate onto the bars but it made them look funny so I resorted to just dropping the cookies in the chocolate, rolling them around and taking them out. Way better.
The most difficult part of the whole process is waiting patiently for them to harden up in the freezer.
