Being a dietitian, I can’t help myself but to study food labels.
The popular Nakd bars are pleasantly short on the list of ingredients. Cocoa Delight is made from 48% dates, 29% cashew nuts, 17% raisins and 6% cocoa powder.
On the face of it an ideal healthy snack, especially for hungry kids after school, with no added sugar, oils, butter, additives, preservatives etc. (more after school snack inspiration). So I’d limit to one a day, mainly because the dates and raisins make it very sweet, albeit with natural sugar. There is the equivalent to a tablespoon per bar (that’s almost 50% sugar). A ‘high sugar’ food has more than about 20g/100g sugar. These bars have 43g/100g. On a positive note, the almonds make it low GI (digested slowly), high in vitamin E and the cocoa powder, dates and raisins are high in antioxidants.
Homemade Cocoa Bars
So, as a ‘treat’ food, I thought I’d experiment with my own version…..I just took the %s from the ingredients list and equated that to the weight (and doubled to make more). I also substituted the cashews for ground almonds. These can be bought already ground up, making it a bit easier.
Here are the ingredients and quantities (makes 6 bars):
ground almonds
100g dates, blended or very finely chopped
Dates
60g ground almonds/cashews
30g raisins, blended (or finely chopped)
Cocoa Powder
10g cocoa powder
Mix all the ingredients together either in a small blender/food processor or by rubbing in with your fingers, it takes a few minutes, and it will be quite dry and crumbly.
Press in to a tin, taking time to pack the mixture in so it is well compressed. Put in to the freezer to cool. The will be ready to chop in to bars after about an hour.
Nutrition info for each bar: 123kcal, 3g protein, 14g (natural) sugar
5 reasons Mums can’t lose weight
sarahdietitian.com 
Loved this guide, they came out absolutely perfect! Thank you
G x
Thanks for the feedback Gemma!
This looks great for a healthy treat for the kids (and for me…) Will be trying soon 🙂 Can I just ask, how long will they keep? And do you have to store them in the fridge or will they be too hard?
Thanks!x
Hi Lisa, I usually keep mine for about two days in the fridge………if they haven’t been devoured before then!! If you keep them in an airtight container they shouldn’t dry out or go hard.
Hi – I have tried to follow your recipes for the Nakd bars but keep getting it wrong! The mixture keeps coming out too dry – almost like sawdust. It gets a little better when I press into a mould but still no where as yummy as yours look!
I have added a little hemp protein powder (about 10g per 100g) but am using 50g of dates per 100g of mixture. I added the powder as I struggle to get enough in my diet.
Maybe the dates are not fresh enough? Maybe the powder is causing the issue?
I only have a blender also – not a food processor. Could this cause the problem?
Sorry for all the questions and thanks for any help you can give!
Jean
P.S. LOVE your site.
Hi Jean, thanks for your questions and lovely comments 🙂 Hemp powder is a great way to increase the protein in the cocoa bars, but it is probably drying them out a bit. It sounds like you need to ever so slightly increase the moisture content. All it should take is adding just a smudge of warm water (or any fluid e.g. milk) to bind the mixture together. Hope that helps!