The Ingredient That Holds a Bar Together

Nuts, seeds, and honey alone don't hold a bar's shape once you slice it. Something has to bind everything without turning the whole thing greasy. That's the job coconut oil does here - it's a structural ingredient more than a flavor one.

Honey does a lot of the binding on its own, but honey by itself is sticky - the kind of sticky that would leave a bar clinging to the wrapper or your fingers. Coconut oil works alongside it to firm everything up and cut that stickiness, so the bar holds together and slices clean instead of turning into a gooey mess.

I'll say the honest thing here: coconut oil is high in saturated fat, and I'm not going to spin that into something it's not. What I can tell you is why I still use it - it's solid at room temperature and softens with gentle heat, which is exactly the behavior you want for something that needs to set up firm in a bar and not turn liquid in a warm car.

I also use cold-pressed, unrefined coconut oil, not the refined kind. Refined coconut oil is typically pushed through high heat and chemical processing to strip out flavor and odor and make it shelf-stable. Cold-pressed unrefined oil skips all of that - it's pressed straight from the coconut meat with nothing else done to it, which fits how I think about every ingredient that goes into these bars.

Coconut oil is in every bar we make - Original, Triple C, Vegan, Holiday, and the Crumble.

← Back to the Ingredient Guide