Pumpkin Dark Chocolate Cheerio Bars

With Fall fast approaching we all know what it brings; pumpkin. If you don’t like love pumpkin I will make it my personal goal to change your mind. Pumpkin is very versatile and goes so well with cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; all delicious Fall spices. It also goes very well with dark chocolate. I saw an ad on Instagram for pumpkin cheerios and immediately went on the hunt for them. I found them at my favorite place; Target (insert a million heart eye emojis here). This store literally has everything you need and somehow has the magic to suck you in there for 2 hours and spend $50+; but still I love it!

Since I’m a teacher I have the summer’s off. This means I am often home all day and it can be very easy to snack often. I find I get bored of eating the same kinds of things everyday so I need a variety I can choose from. It’s important to me that the snacks I choose won’t wash away the hard work I did at the gym and will keep me full. When I dabbled into the Whole30, I discovered that most boxed snack bars were full of ingredients that I couldn’t even pronounce. Enter Larabars. These are awesome snacks that have no added sugar and are made with dates, cashews, and cinnamon; ingredients you know and that you can pronounce. They are one of my go-to snacks but they can be pricey. I learned how to make them via Pinterest and I have been adding my own twists to them. I will do a blog post on them soon! 

Back to pumpkin and chocolate. I knew I wanted to make bars our of these cheerios because there is no way I could eat a whole box before they went stale. I love that the honey in these bars balances the bitterness of the dark chocolate. I used baker's dark chocolate because that's what I had on hand but dark or semi sweet chocolate chips would do the trick too. These bars are made with these three ingredients; that’s it. That’s all you need to have yourself a low calorie snack. But be careful, these things are very addicting. Being that it is just myself and my husband, I made a small batch that I cut into 16 bars. I used an 8X8 pan to shape these in and they are about ½ inch thick. If you double or triple this recipe be sure to use a larger pan or you’ll end up 16 two inch thick bars; but if you like that by all means go for it! What are your favorite healthy snacks?

Recipe

Prep Time: 5 mins

Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients

2 cups pumpkin cheerios

¼ cup honey

2 oz. dark chocolate

Directions

1. Melt dark chocolate with honey and stir until well combined. 
   

2. Add the cheerios directly to the hot mixture and stir until all the cheerios have been coated. 
   
3. Line an 8X8 pan with parchment paper and push mixture into the pan until even

4. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

5. Cut into bars and enjoy!