Home Made Coconut Mounds Protein Bars - Finding Silver Linings

There are two types of people in this world. People that love coconut and people that don’t know what they’re missing. As a kid, we would take a yearly vacation to visit family in West Palm Beach, Florida. Aside from catching up with the fam, the palm trees and sandy beaches, I always looked forward to chocolate dipped coconut patties. Ugh, you guys! If you’ve never tried one before, you should make it a point to. They’re sweet and chewy with dark chocolate coating. They are definitely NOT healthy but they are delicious. The problem I’m having since having Dante nine months ago is I like desserts. A lot. In order to make a healthy lifestyle work for me, I need to invent and tweak recipes to make them A: taste great and B: be healthy. Here’s what I came up with when the coconut patty craving struck this weekend…

The texture of these is super-chewy and the coating is REAL chocolate. They do not taste healthy, so I would say that this recipe is a win. I didn’t use any artificial sweeteners or weird fake stuff. Double win. Long story short, make these and have no regrets about wolfing down a few.

Ingredients

2 scoops vanilla protein powder (I used Gaspari Myofusion in vanilla ice cream flavor)
1.5 cups shredded coconut
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (I used 60% Ghiradelli)

Directions

Line an 8×8 pan with waxed paper
Melt coconut oil in the microwave
Mix protein powder, coconut, coconut oil, and almond milk until combined. It will be sticky
Press the coconut mixture into the pan with a rubber spatula
Put chocolate chips in a plastic ziplock bag and melt in microwave in 30 second increments
Cut off a corner of the bag of melted chocolate and spread onto coconut mixture
Refrigerate and cut into bars when chocolate is set.
Store in refrigerator to hold chewy consistency.