I loved Chris’ homemade Larabars the other day that I wanted to make some more today. Last time he made just a few so he blended the ingredients with our hand-blender. This time, he said to pull out the Cuisinart (no Vitamix yet). We blended the dry ingredients first – a few handfuls of walnuts and some pecans. Then we put those aside and blended the dates, cranberries and raisins. Then we added the nut mixture back in and blended again to pull all the ingredients together. What happened this time, because of the high speed of the Cuisinart blades, is the walnuts started producing massive amounts of walnut oil! It seemed to be just pouring out of them! We added some flaxseed to hopefully soak up the oil but that didn’t work. I tried to form them into bars but the oil was just just too much and was all over my hands. So, we layed all the “dough” out on a cookie sheet and started soaking up the oil with some paper towels… we went though about 6 pieces that became transparent with walnut oil! So now the dough is sitting in the refrigerator – hopefully when it has cooled down it will be easier to form. I tasted a bit of the oily dough and was still very good – and I really liked the addition of the flaxseeds. I am going to put some peanut butter in half the mix – not raw b/c it has evaporated cane juice & maple syrup in it, but we have to use it up and it will be tasty!
The lesson here is that we let the walnuts blend for too long, releasing all their oils. Next time we will either 1) make with the hand blender again or 2) blend the nuts and date mixture by hand instead of putting it back in the Cuisinart.
Update: We let the mixture sit in the fridge for a couple hours but it was still oily. I formed the bars anyway and they are very tasty despite the excess oil. Below is a photo…
Raw Homemade Larabars w/ Cranberries & Flaxseeds
Raw Food Journal 
Leave a comment