 Are you frustrated with trying to find a protein bar at the store that you actually want to eat and serve to your family? Well I'm pretty frustrated and I thought you might be too. So today we're going to make a healthy version. I'm using puffed quinoa and I'll show you that in a little bit. It's kind of like rice crispies for a nice little texture and we're going to be using a lot of nuts. We're going to add some some kind of butter. Peanut butter, almond butter or like sunflower butter is a nice option. I'm going to add a banana so that we can keep the sugar content low and we're going to add a little cinnamon and plenty of different nuts than you get to choose which ones you want. I'll show you what I'm using today and then we'll finish it off with a nice coating of semi-sweet chocolate and I tell you it's really delicious. I'm rockin' Robin and I'm going to show you how to make it right after my chef joke. You know what I said when someone asked me if I wanted a protein bar? I said no way. So to start off our recipe we're going to pull out a nice ripe banana. Remember the more brown spots the more sweet it's going to be. So go ahead and peel that, pop it in a bowl and we'll give it a good ol' mash. I like to make sure that this is nice and smooth with no lumps so I'll take my hand mixer and really smooth it out. The banana not only lends some sweetness to our brownies but it also acts as a binder so it holds everything together. Next we'll add some all natural peanut butter here. I'm using Laura's Scutters. Then we'll add some Salon Cinnamon here, just a little bit. Sprinkle that right in there. Now for a little more sweetness I'm adding some maple syrup. So you can adjust this and play with it but two tablespoons should do the trick. After we add some vanilla extract we're going to give this a really good mix. Now notice how thick this mixture gets. Next I'm adding some protein powder to this and I'm using Truvani's Plant-Based Protein in vanilla flavor. I like this company because they're nice and clean and you can see the ingredients right here. I'll drop in a couple of scoops of this and that will give us about 20 grams of protein for the whole dish. And you'll want to mix this in a little bit at a time as you keep mixing. That way we'll prevent any lumps. You'll want to keep mixing this until it's well combined and you just can't see it anymore. Now it's time for the puffed quinoa knife. You've never heard of this. Well it's a little different. As you can see here there's only puffed quinoa in this. Looking at the nutrition facts you can see that there's a little bit of vitamin D, some calcium, iron and potassium. What I like is that there's 3 grams of protein per cup and a couple of grams of fiber. You're not going to find that in Rice Krispies. You can see here that the quinoa looks like little puffed balls. They're really cute. Next I'm adding some raw sunflower seeds, dry roasted peanuts and some raw walnuts. Now I find mixing this with my clean hands to be the easiest way to do it because the batter is thick. So roll your sleeves up and dive right in. Just keep mixing until it's all evenly dispersed. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and let's line a baking sheet with some parchment paper. Place the dough on top of the baking sheet and then by using your hands you're going to want to shape it into a rectangle about anywhere between a half an inch to an inch thick. Take another piece of parchment paper and lay it over the top of the dough. Now comes the fun part. Press the dough down flat like you're giving that like button a workout. You want to try and keep the dough even as you're pressing it down and getting it to like a half an inch to an inch. You could even use a rolling pin possibly but I'm not sure would fit in between the sides of the pan. Even a pie plate might work if you place it right on top. Overall I found that just using my hands worked pretty darn well. Place this in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for somewhere between 18 and 20 minutes. It must be time for Chef joke number two. Why did the man spread peanut butter all over the freeway? To make the traffic jam better. Okay it's been 18 minutes so let's have a look at our dough. We're looking for this to be a little golden brown which it is. I am going to take this out and we're going to let this cool for a few minutes. Now on to my favorite part chocolate. So I'm using guitarred semi-sweet chocolate here. It's my favorite and it's also gluten-free. Place the chocolate in the microwave on high for 30 second increments or maybe 20 but somewhere between there. Stirring in between each 20 to 30 seconds. You don't want to overdo it because it could burn. The first time I heated this up I did it for 30 seconds and then the second time I did it for 20 seconds and then I think I did another 15 seconds. So just keep stirring until the chocolate has just melted like this. You can just drizzle the chocolate over the you know bars but I like to spread a nice layer on top. Certainly do what works for you. Once you get your chocolate layer on there go ahead and place this in the refrigerator and let it chill so that it looks like this. You can see the color on the chocolate how it's more muted. Now is the best part. Okay I'm going to go ahead and cut this into you know whatever shape you want really. I just try to cut them into the size of what you would buy at the store in a protein bar. And there you have it folks quinoa puff protein bars that are as delicious as they are nutritious and they might even make you ambitious. If you're into chocolate snacks you're going to want to check out my zucchini brownies here. These are delicious, they're healthy and you're just not going to know that they're that healthy. So click the link on the screen it'll take you right to the recipe. Hey I hope you enjoyed today's video. If you did let me know by smashing the like button and leave me a comment. I'd always love to hear from you. Alright we'll see you back here next week for another delicious and healthy recipe.