Buckwheat Date Bars (An Alex invention, recipe courtesy of Ryan Lamanna)

Ingredients:

Roasted buckwheat groats (2 cups)

Nutritional yeast (1/4 cup)

Cinnamon (2 tbsp)

Sea salt (1/2 tsp)

Medjool dates (not the deglet noor variety, and as many as you want)

Coconut oil (a lot)

Honey (a lot)

Blend the dry ingredients in a Vitamix or comparable muscle blender. Leave some buckwheat intact. Gives it a crunch. Pull apart the dates and throw the halves into a big pot with the coconut oil and honey. Melt down the coconut oil and honey and add the dry ingredients. You might have to play with the dry:wet ratio.

The sky is the limit with these things. There are so many different combinations of ingredients, it’d be make your head spin. Whole oats, oat flour, dried fruit, nuts, cocoa beans/nibs/powder, maca, beat root and curry powders, spirulina/chlorella, chia and flax seeds, molasses. The list goes on and on.

No Frownie Brownies

recipe by Alex Newport-Berra

So, the basic ingredients:

“wet”:

canned black beans, drained

coconut oil

splash of homemade nutmilk

vanilla extract

molasses

dates (pre-soaked)

can add a bit of maple syrup if you want

“dry”: 

cacao nibs (you can also use good cocoa powder or 100% chocolate)

cinnamon

chia seeds and or flax seeds

baking soda

baking powder

sea salt

“I blend the dry first, then put that in a bowl, then blend the wet, then either hand mix together in the bowl or leave the wet in the blender and slowly add in the dry, harder to do this second method with larger amounts of batter.

Tasting the wet before you mix them together will give you a good idea whether or not the batter needs more chocolate or more sweet.

These work best if not too thick, probably around 1” to 2”.  We use olive oil to grease the pan, coco oil always seems to burn it.

Set oven to 365 degrees and bake until they are done to your liking. Let cool to set up, then cut and enjoy!”

optional add ins: 

nuts (stir in at the end)

ginger (even the crystalized kind if you want)

choco chips

bananas