Homemade Protein Bars
Updated June 27, 2025
- Total Time
- 1 hour 15 minutes
- Prep Time
- 5 minutes
- Cook Time
- 10 minutes, plus at least 1 hour chilling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- ½cup/167 grams pure maple syrup
- ½teaspoon fine sea salt
- ¼teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ¾cup/217 grams almond butter or ½ cup/145 grams peanut butter (see Tip)
- 1¼cups/122 grams quick-cooking oats
- 1¼cups/150 grams finely chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds, pistachios, cashews or peanuts or a combination (see Tip)
- ½cup/74 grams pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds)
Nutritional analysis per serving (12 servings)
308 calories; 23 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 12 grams monounsaturated fat; 7 grams polyunsaturated fat; 22 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 10 grams sugars; 9 grams protein; 101 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Line the bottom and sides of a 9-inch square baking pan with parchment paper.
- Step 2
Bring the syrup, salt and pepper to a boil over medium-high in a large saucepan, stirring occasionally. Boil until thickened to the consistency of honey, about 2 minutes. Turn the heat down to low, add the almond butter, and stir until smooth and bubbles just start to pop, about 1 minute longer. Turn off the heat.
- Step 3
Add the oats, nuts and seeds, and stir until everything is very evenly coated. Smash and scrape the mixture as needed to get everything coated; the mixture will be quite stiff.
- Step 4
Scrape the mixture into the parchment-lined pan and press firmly into an even layer. Refrigerate until stiff, at least 1 hour and up to overnight.
- Step 5
Use the parchment to slide the slab out of the pan and onto a cutting board. Cut into 12 even bars. Wrap individually, if you’d like. The bars will keep in an airtight container at room temperature or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.
- Peanut butter binds ingredients best, but almond butter works as well. You just need more of it to glue the bars together. Sunflower seed butter can be used, but the bars may crumble. Tahini isn’t quite sticky enough to do the job. All-natural varieties, in which the only ingredients are the nuts or seeds and salt (and, sometimes, oil), deliver the nuttiest flavor.
- You can use any variety or combination of your favorite nuts. Just make sure they’re raw, or natural, without added oils or salt. Also make sure that they’re chopped small enough so that the bars will hold. Pre-chopped walnuts and pecans and sliced almonds make this recipe come together even more quickly.
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Comments
Delicious, but very misleading to call them protein bars. Lots of calories (~300) to get to less than 10g of protein.
I tested these with regular rolled oats and they're very tasty, but because they're larger and thicker than quick-cooking oats, the bars don't hold together easily. If you're ok with the bars crumbling a bit, you definitely can use rolled oats!
Could you use honey in the first place (or better yet, Lyle's syrup) rather than boiling maple syrup until it has the consistency of honey?
This recipe has ripped off Angela Liddon's recipe for Glow Bars. Bad on you, Genevieve Ko!!
First time I made this it never set up…2nd time was a charm since I made sure to not overcook the syrup (2min is good) and made sure to wait for the syrup to go to low before adding the nut butter otherwise the nut butter is likely to turn to powder and not form the necessary “glue” to bind the nuts.
This is a sugary calorie-bomb that lacks complete protein. I might make this for a backpacking trip when I'm burning a massive amount of calories, but I wouldn't make it otherwise unless I were severely underweight and needed to put on some bodyfat. This has protein, but is not a "protein bar" in any real way.