Lemon Bars-The Rawtarian

By SpartyGreenMom

Ingredients

• 1 cup almonds
• 1 1/2 cups dates
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon zest (the peel from 1 lemon)
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (ideally from the lemon above)
• 1 1/4 cups shredded dried coconut
• 3/4 teaspoon sea salt

Details

Servings 8
Preparation time 5mins
Cooking time 65mins
Adapted from therawtarian.com

Preparation

Step 1

1. Place almonds in food processor and process into a fine powder.
2. Add dates, vanilla, lemon juice (if using fresh squeezed don't let any lemon seeds go into the recipe!) and lemon zest to food processor. A note re: lemon zest: Lemon zest is simply lemon peel. If you don't have a fancy zester, just do what I do: use a clean carrot peeler and "peel" the lemon with your carrot peeler and throw the big chunky peels into the food processor for processing. Done!
3. Process again until well mixed. Depending on how hard your dates are this could be a wild ride!
4. Once everything seems pretty well processed thus far, set food processor lemon bar mixture aside for a moment.
5. In a large mixing bowl, place your dried coconut and salt. Mix with a spoon to distribute sea salt.
6. Now dump your food processor mixture into the mixing bowl. Mix everything together with your clean hands so that it's nicely combined and resembling a delicious lemon bar dough!
7. Transfer your raw lemon bar dough into your final dish. I like to use a glass brownie dish. Now press the mixture down into the dish with your hands so that the mixture sticks together nicely.
8. Ideally, you should refrigerate your raw lemon bars for about an hour so that they really stick together and are easy to cut.
9. Enjoy your raw lemon bars! Their lemony coconut flavor goes really well with fresh or thawed strawberries. They should be stored in the refrigerator.

Tip: Be careful if doubling this raw lemon bar recipe. You might want to make two batches right after one another instead of making one huge batch because it can be tough to get everything to move well in the food processor.
Tip: If your dates are rock-hard try softening them by soaking them in warm water for half-an-hour, then squeezing almost all water out of them before using in this raw lemon bar recipe.