Peanut Flour Breakfast Bars

These tasty and wholesome bars are packed with protein, fiber, and other essential nutrients, making for a perfect grab-and-go breakfast or snack. Without the optional dried cranberries, these bars have only 3g net carbs per serving and nearly 15g of protein. Texture-wise, these bars are a bit like a dense loaf-cake. In fact, I suspect they would turn out nicely baked in a small loaf tin and sliced with a serrated bread knife. If you give this a try, let us know how it turns out. These bars are not very sweet, so feel free to add a pinch of monk fruit or a few drops of stevia for a boost. Adding more allulose may also be an option, but this is more likely to affect the texture of the bars. Please see the note about sweeteners. For a slightly lower-fat bar, or because you don't have any on hand, feel free to skip the cacao nibs. They aren't structurally essential to the recipe. Calories and macros without the cacao nibs are given below the recipe, as are calories and macros for a larger serving size (1 of 6 bars). However you tweak this recipe to suit your needs, enjoy!

Looking for something more decadent? Check out my Peanut Flour Blondies.
Yield: 9 bars
Macros (per serving): 265 calories | 15g protein | 20g fat | 3g net carbs
Prep: 20 minutes | Bake: 30 minutes | Cool: 20 minutes
Equipment Required: a high-powered blender (preferably bullet), and a 7-inch (18cm) square cake pan or a 9x5-inch (23x13cm) loaf pan
Storage: at room temperature for up to 36 hours or refrigerated for up to 5 days. Cool fully before sealing in an airtight container.
Warning: keto baking can be very finicky. Though this recipe is pretty forgiving, I suggest using a kitchen scale to weigh all ingredients for which gram measurements are provided.

Dry Ingredients:
  • 1 cup (120g) defatted peanut flour, sifted if lumpy
  • ⅓ cup (64g) allulose (another sweetener may or may not work ✎)
  • 2 tsp cinnamon or pumpkin spice
  • 1½ tsp baking powder
  • ⅛ tsp salt
  • ⅓ cup (33g) walnuts, chopped
  • ¼ cup (40g) hemp hearts
  • 2 Tbsp (20g) chia seeds
  • ¼ cup (36g) cocoa nibs
  • (optional addition [+2.5g net carbs per bar]) 3 Tbsp (30g) dried cranberries, cut large pieces in half with scissors ✎​
Wet Ingredients:
  • 1 cup (240ml/g) unsweetened soy or pea milk, at room temperature​
  • ⅔ cup (96g) oil-roasted salted peanuts ✎
  • 3 Tbsp (45ml/41g) melted coconut oil or neutral-flavored oil of choice
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
Directions:
  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
  2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.
  3. Line an 7-inch (18cm) square pan with parchment paper. Let the parchment overhang 2 sides for easy removal of the bars. If you do not have a 7-inch (18cm) square pan, you can use a 9x5-inch (23x13cm) loaf pan.
  4. Put the wet ingredients in a high-powered blender and blend to smooth. I'm using a bullet blender for this. ✎
  5. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture. Try to get as much of the wet mixture out of the blender as possible. Mix until a thick batter is formed and no dry patches remain. I use a large silicone spatula for this. 
  6. Transfer the batter to the pan and spread into an even layer.
  7. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.
  8. Transfer to a wire cooling rack and allow to cool in the pan for about 5 minutes. Then carefully remove from the pan and allow to cool for another 15 minutes. Cool more fully for storage.
  9. Cut into 9 bars and enjoy. 
Larger Serving Size (6 Bars): 395 calories | 22g protein | 30g fat | 4.5g net carbs (8.5g with cranberries)
Without Cacao Nibs (9 Bars): 240 calories | 14g protein | 18g fat | 3g net carbs ● (6 Bars): 360 calories | 21g protein | 26g fat | 4.5g net carbs
✎ Notes:
  • Peanut flour is one of my favorite flours for vegan keto baking. It is low in carbs, high in protein, and has a lovely subtle nutty flavor. Structurally, it behaves much like chickpea flour, making it a great option for creating certain types of baked goods. I'm using Protein Plus peanut flour, which is a defatted peanut flour, and may not be available outside the United States. I use a "shop and ship" service to have it delivered to me abroad. In the distant past, I have tried an alternative peanut flour from Nuts.com (also in the US) and found it behaved similarly in the recipes I tried it in. A more widely available option that may also work in this recipe is a sugar-free peanut butter powder. As for using another flour here, perhaps a defatted almond flour would work. Defatted sesame flour may work, but I find it needs a little more liquid than peanut flour. In essence, if you don't have peanut flour, you're better off with a different recipe.
  • I have not made this with any other sweeteners and I'm not sure how it would turn out with an alternative. Allulose retains moisture in a way that is similar to sugar and other keto-friendly sweeteners do not have this quality.
  • I prefer to use oil-roasted peanuts in recipes because they are cheap and readily available. However, I assume a dry-roasted peanut would work fine here. Note that the macros are calculated with oil-roasted peanuts, which have a slighlty different nutritional value than dry-roasted ones.
  • If you're using the cranberries, you may be able to find an option that contain fewer net carbs than the NCCDB data that I have used to calculate the macros. Ocean Spray makes 50% sugar craisins. There are also unsweetened dried cranberries out there, but the one time I tried some, they were pretty dissappointing.
  • For the wet mixture, there isn't a lot of content for blending, which is one reason I prefer to use a bullet blender here. If you use a countertop blender with a large carafe, blending might be difficult.
  • Macros for this recipes are calculated with national nutritional data (i.e. NCCDB & USDA entries in Cronometer) for all ingredients apart from the peanut flour (Protein Plus), Hemp Hearts (Manitoba Harvest), chia seeds (Bob's Redmill), and cocoa nibs (Zint).
  • Macro numbers are rounded. Numbers equal to or greater than 10g are rounded to the nearest whole number (e.g. 10g, 11g, 12g, etc.) and numbers below 10g are rounded to the nearest 0.5g (0.5g, 1g, 1.5g ... 9g, 9.5g). Any numbers below 0.5g are given as is (e.g. 0.1g, 0.2g, etc.). Calories are rounded to the nearest multiple of 5.