Huel bars - including recipe and nutritional profile

For past few years I’ve been batching up my own protein bars. They’ve varied wildly between tasting like confectionary of the gods (but terribly unhealthy) to reminding me of something growing between my toes. In general, the healthier I try to make them, the worse they taste. But after a bunch of experimentation, I eventually hit the sweet spot between disgusting but healthy, and delicious but potentially causing coronary issues.

Now that I’m on the Huel bandwagon, I decided to have a crack at using Huel as the base for my bars.

I’ve posted the full recipe, nutritional profile and my opinion of their taste on my website:
https://geek.hellyer.kiwi/recipes/huel-bar/

If you are interested in seeing more recipes like this, please let me know.

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Great! Ill try it

OMG! I. LOVE. PEANUT. BUTTER.
Do you buy it, or do you your own recipe for it all the same?
I’ll try your recipe asap, thanks!

These look squishy and yummy and easy to try… How many bars do you make from that recipe? I have no ability to guess stuff like that. :stuck_out_tongue:

I made two very large bars with it. I had one as a taste test last night, and the other this morning for breakfast.

They’re not terrific. They’re also a little crumbly. Next time I’ll probably add some honey, apple sauce and almond milk to help with binding it together, and I’ll add some more flavouring.

This was more of a test to see whether it was viable to make something with a similar’ish nutrient profile to the Huel powder itself, without it tasting horrendous. Mission accomplished.

But I’d still rather have something which tasted nicer and which is less crumbly, hence the potential move to a higher sugar content version.

I just buy the peanut butter from a local organic food shop. The organic food places tend to have the good quality stuff, without added salt and other junk mixed in. It’s just made from peanuts and nothing else.

I like this as a minimal sugar template to work from though :slight_smile:

This is the best peanut butter you can buy:

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You can make your own, way cheaper :slight_smile:

Step 1 (optional): bake nuts for a bit in the oven on a low heat.
Step 2: Put nuts into food processor or blender for ten minutes

I add MCT oil and a bit of manuka to mine. Macadamia nut butter is particularly nice. Blander than store bought, but way less preservatives.

I’m definitely interested.

I did a new batch recently with apple sauce and orange juice to help bind it together.

Adding the fruit based stuff sky rockets the sugar content, but I think it’s worth it just to improve the taste and stop them becoming crumbly, plus they taste a lot better that way too.

I’ve posted an experimental recipe here, but it requires a lot more work:

My next batch will probably include some peanut butter in an attempt to keep the sugar content down (the peanut butter helps bind the bar together, similar to how the sugar works).

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Why did the first recipe have to go to the fridge?

The second recipe went in the fridge too.

It’s because I melt the chocolate, water and peanut butter together, and so the bars are quite hot. When they’re hot, they are super squishy and sticky. You could leave them out on the bench too, but it’d take longer.

I store all my bars in the freezer too, as I tend to make huge batches all at once and I’m never sure how long they’ll last on the shelf. I haven’t done that with Huel bars yet, as I haven’t come up with a sufficiently good recipe that I want to commit to long term yet. I know Huel on it’s own lasts a long time, but I don’t know if the combination of ingredients may go bad over time.

So once they’re solid you don’t need to worry about leaving them out?

Yeah. I cart them around with me during the day in a little plastic tupperware container.

That first recipe is quite crumbly though. The second recipe is less crumbly and tastes better.

Basically, the healthier they are, the more crumbly and worst tasting they are :confused:

I’m wondering if it might be worth coating them in chocolate. That way a more crumbly interior can be held together with chocolate.

Dried yoghourt may also be a good idea, although I have no idea how to coat something in dried yoghourt, so I’d need to figure out how that process works first.

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Yoghurt = dairy. Not for me.

I wonder if fat can be used for that.

I think it would probably be too greasy then, not to mention it’d taste kinda weird.

Perhaps coating them in melted sucrose could work. I’ve done that with popcorn before, so perhaps the same concept could be applied to Huel bars. If the amount of sucrose used was less than required to stop the bar from crumbling, then it’d result in less total sugar being used.

EDIT: I have an idea … melt the sucrose in a frying pan. Freeze the crumbly bars in the freezer so that they hold together. Then hold the frozen bar with tongs and dunk it into the sucrose. The bar would get a light coating of sucrose, hopefully enough to keep the bar solid, but not enough to massively effect the nutrition of the bar. Hold the bar with the tongs until the sucrose has solidified, then leave it on a rack to cool down.

So long as the bar isn’t left in the pan too long, it shouldn’t burn (pop corn doesn’t).

It’s an idea. I’ll look into it (no clue when though).

Actually I tested this approach yesterday and it turned out just fine. I just have to master my skills/tools in order to coat them uniformly and with a minimum chocolate thickness in order for the chocolate/huel ratio to be less than 1/5 which is the sugar threshold set by the Huel bars (~11% by weight). Any advice would be much appreciated.

[quote=“bogn, post:19, topic:3919”]…
coat them uniformly and with a minimum chocolate thickness in order for the chocolate/huel ratio to be less than 1/5 which is the sugar threshold set by the Huel bars (~11% by weight). Any advice would be much appreciated
[/quote]

Just use chocolate which doesn’t contain sugar :wink: