Rice krispies bars – sugar free / gluten free

A while back I bought Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar For Life cookbook.  Mostly because I like to make sweet treats that are not sweetened with sugar, and secondly because she’s an Aussie and has great hair 😉

Now that my kids are away at grandma’s for a few weeks I’ve actually had time to flip through the book and my first test recipe was for sugar free and gluten free rice krispies bars. My kids love those things but the shop bought ones are full of gazillion ingredients I can’t even pronounce so this recipe with 5 ingredients sounded awesome.

The sweetener in it is rice malt syrup. I haven’t used it before but didn’t have any trouble finding it in my local health food shop. It’s made from fermented rice and water.  The recipe itself goes like this:

• 1 cup macadamia nuts
• 4 cups puffed rice cereal (if you use puffed brown rice, the bars will be chewy instead of crunchy; I used it and the deliciousness is still there a 100%)
• 1/2 cup rice malt syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla powder (I used extract)
• 1 1/2 tsp sea salt (I used just a pinch)

Step 1: process macadamia nuts in a blender or food processor until you have paste

Step 2: add the nut paste, syrup, vanilla and salt into a saucepan and heat until it begins to melt

Step 3: mix the liquid with the puffed rice

Step 4: press firmly into a lined baking tray, refrigerate and after 15 minutes cut into squares.

I am super happy with the way these bars turned out. My kids are not in London at the moment so I don’t know if they’ll pass the Kid Test but I will let you know in August – I’m pretty sure though that they’ll pass the test.

The cookbook has many other sweet recipes, as well as lots of recipes for savoury dishes and a lot of information about sugar and healthy living in general. It’s a pretty little thing too – looks like a cool scrap-book and makes me excited about food and life and health. The next recipe I’m trying is Vietnamese style pulled pork & cucumber salad (can’t live without a daily dose of cucumbers in the summer!)