Chocolate Crunch Bars with Peanut Swirl

I found this recipe on the Oh She Glows website which is a beautiful vegan cooking website. Our version did not come out nearly as beautiful as the picture posted on Oh She Glows but my Little Chef had fun making them and Baby Chef had fun eating them. 

The original recipe calls for brown "rice crispies." I had to add a bit more cereal than was called for in the recipe and I used organic puffed rice cereal because that was my best option here in France but you can play around with what you have available. It's a fun 20 minute recipe to make with the kids. 

Like many raw sweets these are best kept in the freezer. Putting them in a lunch box for school will probably end up in a chocolatey, sticky mess so reserve them for after-school snacks and dinner dessert.

Coconut oil is a much healthier alternative to butter and other oils but it definitely makes everything taste a bit coco-nutty! My kids like that. Hopefully yours will too. It is available here at all the Bio markets and a friend just sent me a text to say she found it in the big Carrefour in Antibes. Hooray! 

  

Ingredients:

Bars:

1/2 cup (250g) coconut oil

1/2 cup (50 g) unsweetened cocoa powder

5 Tablepoons Maple Syrup

Pinch of sea salt

1 - 1 1/2 cups (around 50g) organic rice cereal 

Peanut Butter Swirl:

2 Tablespoons Organic Peanut Butter

2 teaspoons coconut oil, or more to thin the peanut butter

1 teaspoon maple syrup or agave nectar

Line a loaf pan or small casserole dish with parchment paper. Gently melt the coconut oil over a low heat until liquified. Stir in the cocoa powder, maple syrup, vanilla extract and salt to combine until smooth. Remove from heat and stir in the cereal. Pour mixture into prepared pan and freeze 15 minutes or until chocolate is set. 

Remove from the freezer and cut into squares or bars.

For the Peanut Butter swirl - Melt the coconut oil in a small sauce pan and add the peanut butter and maple syrup and stir to combine. (I did 2 teaspoons of coconut oil but could have used a bit more because my peanut butter was so thick.) Scoop the mixture into a small sandwich baggie and squeeze it down into one of the corners of the bag. Twist the top of the bag and cut the tip off of the corner to create a small pastry bag. Hand the pastry bag over to your little chefs and ask them to swirl the peanut butter over the bars. Return to the freezer and wait for peaunut butter to set, about 10 minutes. 

Voila!