Sarah (my one and half year old daughter) is becoming naughtier by the day. We tried to keep her away from chocolates but last month she tasted one and now she is so fond of them that she doesn’t forget them even if we don’t give her for days. Not her fault, Chocolates are really sinful, when we can’t resist, how will she resist them!

Day before yesterday, I was reading an article and it mentioned of “Nutri Bars”". Out of nowhere an idea came to me with a spark and I entered the kitchen. It was inspired by Nutri bars, my angel’s love for chocolates and mom’s Til ke laddoo(last week she prepared “Gur aur til ke laddoo”(sesame balls with jaggery base) . My first attempt did not work as I wanted to but I did not loose hope and tried again. Bingo! this time I got what I had imagined. It took almost 10-15 minutes to prepare this home made super healthy version of Nutri Bars.

Nutritional Benefits:

It is very tough to summarize the nutritional benefits of jaggery, honey, walnuts, raisins, sesame seeds and whole grain flakes within one post. I will just mention in brief here and will very soon post detailed information on the nutritional benefits of all these wonder food.

Jaggery has the ability to cleanse your body, act as a digestive agent, sweeten your food in a healthy manner, provides good amount of minerals.

Honey offers incredible antiseptic, antioxidant and cleansing properties for our body and health, hot beauty and skin care, and amazing healing properties as a head-to-toe remedy, from eye conjunctivitis to athlete foot.

Walnuts contain healthy fats (omega 3), known to improve artery functions. Regular intake of walnuts helps lowers your total as well as LDL or bad cholesterol and increases your good cholesterol levels in the blood.Good for brain as they contain Omega 3 fatty acid. Help beat insomnia, prevent gallstones, protects bone health, has anticancer properties.

Rasins aid in relief from constipation, acidosis, anaemia, fever. Raisins also help in weight gain, eye care, dental care, and bone health.

Sesame Seeds are excellent dietary source of calcium. These are a good source of manganese, copper, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, vitamin B1 (thiamine), zinc, vitamin E, healthy protein, and fibre. Sesame seeds also contain sesamin and sesamolin, two substances that are thought to prevent high blood pressure and protect the liver against oxidative damage.

Ingredients:

(The quantity specified will make four, 4 inch bars)

• Grated Jaggery     – 4 spoon
• Honey                      – 1/2 spoon
• Sesame Seeds       – 2 spoon
• Walnuts                  – 4 to5 (chopped)
• Raisins                     – 30-35 pieces
• Mixed Flakes        – 4 spoon
• Ghee                       – 1/2 spoon

Steps:

1. Grate jaggery and keep it aside.
2. Heat ghee in a pan and keep it on very low flame, add jaggery and stop the flame. Jaggery should just melt and not change its color in the process.
3. Add honey and all the other ingredients immediately, when the jaggery is in molten state.(you have to be really fast, as soon as jaggery will solidify, the ingridients wont mix well)
4. Add this mixture to a greased plate and cut it into rectangular blocks in shape of  chocolates.
5. Let the mixture cool. May take an hour or so.
6. Remove the bars from the plate and keep them in an air tight container.

I tried this process two times yesterday. First time I tried it without honey. The resultant nutri bar was very hard. Also, the pan was a little over hot due to which as soon as I added jaggery, it changed color and the final nutri bar did not taste as good as it should have.

Second time, I added honey and also was very careful that the jaggery should just melt and not get over heated and what came out this time was no less than a packaged nutri bar we get in market. Sarah is enjoying these bars since yesterday which I presented to her like new chocolates (smiles) ! Not only Sarah, also Manish, mom and my sister in law who visited us yesterday, loved it!

If you have a sweet tooth and you can’t resist sweets then opt for these kind of healthier options that have jaggery/ honey in place of sugar. Try this out and tell me if your family (especially kids) liked it!

I am adding this post to “‘Made with Love” blog hop hosted by Rashmie@mommy-labs. For me exploring something new in my kitchen is my “Me Time”. The end product may not come out tobe as I expect but spending that time and exploring new things is what gives me immense satisfaction!