First-hand Fitness #2 | On Cost: A Recipe for a 59p Luxury Nutella® Protein Bar with 38.4g Protein!

There have been times in my life when I’ve survived on as little as a twenty quid a week. A good proportion of that sum usually went on pre-night out alcohol; the rest I would squander on food and warmth. These days I’ve got more than just myself to look after though, and thankfully my means have increased to meet my responsibilities, yet I still find myself fighting a constant war with the cost-cutting thriftiness that a combination of four years on a student loan and having been raised by one of the most frugal men to have ever lived engendered.

Towards the back end of last year, as our weekly “big shop” started to spill over two hundred notes per week, even the missus began to realise that we were spending too much on grub – or, as she saw it, I was. Eating healthily costs, so “overeating healthily” (a contradiction in terms though it may be) really costs.

Even once I’d finished with my winter bulk-up and finally given up meat (and thus slashed our food bill by a third overnight), I was still throwing too much away on supplements - particularly protein bars. I tried buying them online in bulk, but that would have only brought marginal savings even if I’d have just kept consuming the same amount as when I used to buy them individually. Inevitably though, more in the cupboard just meant that I increased the number that I was eating.

At the same time, I was also becoming more aware of all the extraneous ingredients that’s in even the most reputable of them, as my mission to cut our food bill coincided with my side-project of eliminating inflammatory foods from my diet in an attempt to mitigate the effects of arthritis. I therefore decided to try my hand at making my own.

Now anyone who’s ever tried this will tell you that the word ‘bar’ is extremely misleading in a domestic context – my first few attempts were more like bowls of cereal than they were the rock-solid, factory-pressed slabs that you’ll find inside a wrapper in a shop, and the next couple of batches didn’t survive for long outside the fridge either. Now though, I’ve created a recipe that can survive outside the fridge for almost a full day if required (though I’d still urge you to pack a spoon in summer). And, best of all, it’s cheap to make; tastes better than any commercially-available protein bar that I’ve ever tried; has a much higher protein content; and contains only the sweeteners and preservatives that you’ll find in Holland and Barrett’s highly-regarded Precision Engineered protein whey (which, crucially, don’t include the hyper-inflammatory aspartame).

1kg natural rolled oats [75p]

1l skimmed milk [£0.89 for 2l, so 45p ]

324g Precision Engineered protein whey powder (chocolate flavour) [RRP is £42.99 for 950g, but Holland and Barrett usually have it either at half price, or in their “Penny Sale”, so it’s £21.50 for 950g in real terms; £7.33 for the requisite 324g]

100g crunchy peanut butter  [89p for 340g, so 26p]

150g Nutella® hazelnut spread [around £3.50 for a 750g jar, so £0.70 for 150g]

TOTAL COST TO MAKE 16 BARS: £0.75 + £0.45 + £7.33 + £0.26 + £0.70 = £9.49

TOTAL COST PER BAR: £0.59

ONE
Pour 500g of the oats into a large mixing bowl.

TWO
Pour 250ml of the skimmed milk into a shaker, add 25g of the peanut butter and three full scoops of the protein whey (totalling 81g). Shake vigorously for around thirty seconds until the shaker is filled with a viscous brown liquid flecked with crunchy golden peanut fragments.

THREE

Empty the liquid into the bowl, taking care to scrape all of the crunchy peanut fragments into it too (most of them will be lodged in the shaker’s filter).

FOUR
Repeat steps two and three.

FIVE
Using a large wooden spoon, carefully stir the liquid until all of those lovely, slow-burning oats are caked in high-protein choc-peanut milkshake.

SIX
Scrape the mixture out of the bowl and into a baking tray. Use the spoon to flatten down the top of the mixture so that the surface is smooth.

SEVEN
Place it in the – wait for it –freezer. For best results with whey, you should generally consume it within twenty minutes of mixing the powder with liquid, but I’ve never experienced any problems with freezing it in its mixed form.

EIGHT

Repeat steps one to seven, so that you have two baking trays’ worth of the product in your freezer. Leave them there for at least a couple of hours; ideally longer (I generally take one out after around four hours and proceed to step nine, leaving the other in the freezer for a few days until the other has been consumed. That way I only have to bake once each week).

NINE

Measure out 75g of Nutella® and spread it evenly across the now rock-hard surface of the mixture until you have a thin hazelnut topping. Place the product in the fridge and leave it for an hour or so.

TEN

Chuck some weights about in your garage (or the gym) for an hour, take the product out of the fridge and slice it (it should now be soft enough to cut) into eight cake-like slices. Eat one (or two).

ELEVEN

Once you’ve eaten through your first baking tray’s worth of the product, repeat steps nine and ten.

A (rather obvious) word of warning though: as will be evident from the nutritional information provided above (which was arrived at by inputting all the ingredients’ respective values into MyFitnessPal and then tallying up their aggregate), this is obviously not a protein bar cake for those looking to maintain a svelte physique or cut fat. It’s intended as a big, dirty bulk-up  bar cake for those stuggling to hit their calorie goals and looking to add mass. As well as plenty of protein and slow-burning carbs, it comes with a decent dose of healthy fats and one hell of a sugar spike.

But it’s cheap - and delicious.