These Citrus Fig and Almond Snack Bars come together quickly and easily with only 4 ingredients and a food processor! Make this fast and simple recipe today for a healthy breakfast on the go, a perfect road trip snack, or for an afternoon energy boost at school or work!
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After years of tinkering with different approaches to healthy eating, I think I’ve finally figured out the two most vital overall concepts for my personal healthy eating success: weekly preparation and remembering healthy snacks. Now realization and implementation are two very different matters, and let’s just not discuss how many weeks it’s been since I’ve had my sh*t together enough to successfully prep all (or even most…) of our food for the week. Yeah, let’s not do that. Instead, let’s celebrate the little success of creating a delicious and ridiculously simple snack recipe that doubles as the perfect breakfast on the go. (Let’s also pray that the winter cold and flu gods feel we’ve been sufficiently gracious hosts during their tedious weeks-long visit and feel moved to move along!)
Easy Snacks For the Win: 4-Ingredient Citrus Fig & Almond Snack Bars
I am all about easy healthy snacks… and, well, easy food in general. While I do occasionally love lazy days of braising meals for hours or cooking chili on the stovetop for an entire afternoon on a cold wintry day, most of the time, I’m just trying to balance all the usual chaos of life, and making complex snacks just to stay on top of healthy eating…? Nope, not a chance. I love snacks; I need snacks. I’m not really a three meals a day kind of gal; I prefer a few small meals along with multiple snack breaks throughout the day, especially considering literally every day of the week I’m on a different schedule. Somedays I forgo real meals entirely (sorry hubby, I know you’re trying to get me to eat real meals at least sometimes… I’m a work in progress) in favor of just a day of snacks. Give me ALL THE SNACKS!
Ok, so now that we’ve established my love affair with snacks (healthy snacks, though! Always healthy snacks!), let’s break down why I adore these little fruity snack bars so very much. First of all, did you see the only 4 ingredients part of that title?? Yeah: four ingredients! Ah simplicity, be still my heart. 🙂 You need raw almonds (actually roasted would work too; it’ll just change up the flavor a bit), dried Smyrna Figs, some orange zest (or tangerine or clementine… whatever floats your citrusy boat), and salt. Bam. That’s it! Then grab your food processor, and you’re ready to go!
If you’ve been around the blog a while, you likely know our two most used and adored kitchen appliances include our Vitamix blender, which we use pretty much daily, whether for an easy apple pie breakfast smoothie or to whip up a quick blueberry lavender lemonade, and our food processor, which we use for SO many snacks. Cory makes all his salsas—smoky chipotle, peach green chile, mango jalapeño, etc—in our trusty food processor, and I’m all about the energy bite, snack ball, energy snack bar (you’ve seen all those on Pinterest, right?!) style snacks that come together so quickly and easily in a food processor. Remember the chocolate cherry brownie bites or the blueberry lemon lavender energy bites. These citrus fig and almond snack bars have similar preparation. Remember, I’m all about the easy, quick, healthy snacks, especially the sweet snacks!
You start by making an almost fine almond flour by processing the raw almonds; then add the zest and salt and pulse a few times. Finally, with the processor running, add the figs (stems removed) one at a time until everything starts sticking together and balling up in the food processor a bit. If the mixture seems too dry, add a few more figs, one at a time. Then press the mixture into a parchment lined pan (I like 8” x 8” pans for this), and slice into simple snack bars! Alternatively, you could just ball the mixture up, making yummy figgy energy bites instead!
While perhaps not the most attractive little dried fruits, figs pack a serious nutritional punch. Not only do figs come chock full of vitamins A and B1/B2 and minerals like potassium, iron, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and more, but they’ll also help keep you fuller longer with their fiber content! Apparently they can even help protect against sore throats due to mucilage content! How awesome is that? What perfect little fruits for this cold and flu season that has so quickly descended upon us all! In this recipe, we use Smyrna Figs, either Turkish Smyrna figs or Calimyrna figs, which are the California grown version.
Almonds, like so many nuts, provide an excellent source of good fats, protein, and fiber while remaining rather low in digestible carbs, which provides a nice balance to the sweet fig with more carbs, making the combo a great little pick me up for a work snack or after school snack for kids! Almonds also contain high concentrations of antioxidants like vitamin E as well as significant amounts of magnesium, an integral mineral linked to blood sugar and blood pressure control.
Even the orange zest contains fabulous health benefits, ranging from containing the flavonoid hesperidin, which helps lower bad cholesterol and triglyceride levels as well as having anti-inflammatory properties, to containing skin-healthy oil and pectin, a naturally occurring fiber that helps keep blood sugars in check, mitigating the spikes that can occur from ingesting sweets!
With their powers combined (anyone remember Captain Planet??), these nutrient dense healthy powerhouses create a fantastic, super healthy snack bar or energy bite that will boost your energy while still filling you up and keeping you from the sugar crash of processed sweets. That and they’re just freakin’ delicious!! Whether you eat these citrus fig and almond snack bars for breakfast, take them on the go for car trips or hiking, stash them in your snack drawer at work, or make them as a healthy snack for kids after school, you’ll want to keep a batch on hand all the time! Since you can find these ingredients year-round, these healthy snack bars make a perfect, unique healthy sweet treat for any season!
**Not sure what ingredients to purchase or where? Click the links in the recipe below, or check out lots of our recommendations on our Healthy Pantry Staples resource page!**
These Citrus Fig and Almond Snack Bars come together quickly and easily with only 4 ingredients and a food processor! Make this fast and simple recipe today for a healthy breakfast on the go, a perfect road trip snack, or for an afternoon energy boost at school or work.
18–20 dried Smyrna figs (Turkish or Calimyrna), stem removed
¼ tsp sea salt
Zest of 1 large orange
Instructions
Food process almonds into a somewhat fine flour (Don’t process too long, or you’ll end up with almond butter!).
Add salt & orange zest; pulse a few times.
With the food processor running, gradually add figs ,1 at a time, until 18 have been added. You want the mixture to end up sticking together, and it should start to ball up a bit in the processor. If your mixture is too dry, continue adding a couple more figs, one at a time, until desired texture is reached.
Press firmly and evenly into a parchment lined 8″ x 8″ pan. If you like, you can use a small rolling pin to help even out the bars, or you can smooth out the top of the bars with slightly damp fingers.
Remove mixture from pan, and cut into bars (makes 10 large or 20 small for me).
Store refrigerated for the longest shelf life, and keep parchment between bars to keep from sticking together.
Notes
If you’d rather make energy bites or energy balls, just ball up the mixture instead of pressing it into a pan.
If you don’t have orange zest, you can add ¼ to ½ tsp cinnamon instead for a different but still tasty bar!
Need Other Easy Energy Bites & Healthy On the Go Snacks?
Check out some of our favorite sweet and sometimes fruity healthy snacks to keep you full and satisfied and assuage your sweet-tooth with healthy but oh so delicious sweet snacks! All of these travel well, making them excellent choices to slay a sweet tooth while on the trail, in the car, or at work or school:
Special thanks to my father for getting me completely addicted to dried figs; it’s been a lovely and delicious deviation from my usual obsession with dates, and I now have so many new ideas for recipes with figs! Love you, Dad! <3
Do you like simple snacks or struggle with balancing all the things in life and regularly miss your weekly meal prep too? Do you have a favorite simple sweet snack? Let me know in the comments below! For more tasty recipes and ideas, follow us on Pinterest or Facebook, or better yet, subscribe to Our Sweetly Spiced Life for delicious recipes, occasional DIYs, and more foodie finds delivered to your inbox.
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, some orange zest (or tangerine or clementine… whatever floats your citrusy boat), and salt. Bam. That’s it! Then grab your food processor, and you’re ready to go!
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Incredible! I used macadamia nuts because it’s what I had, but regardless my husband and I devoured them.