5 Ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars

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These five-ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars are a simple, easy to make dessert and are perfect to have on hand for an after dinner treat!  

These five-ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars are a simple, easy to make dessert and are perfect to have on hand for an after dinner treat!

Hi friends!

As I promised yesterday when I shared a tutorial about How To Make Date Paste, I’m back with a delicious recipe for you to make after you whip up your first batch!

These are my new favorite post-dinner treat and I love having a batch on hand in the freezer! They also got the seal of approval from the hubby, who isn’t a big dessert person…so that’s how you know they’re good!

Like I mentioned yesterday, today is Recipe Redux day and this month’s theme was new ingredient for a new year. I picked date caramel as my new ingredient. Even though I often use dates to make energy balls, etc…i’ve been seeing this date paste/date caramel around for a while and had yet to make it myself or try it in a recipe…so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity!

So here’s the deal. I’m calling these Freezer Turtle Bars. Here’s what I know about turtle desserts:  not a lot. I know they’re usually made with some combo of caramel, chocolate and pecans. That’s about it. Since I rarely have actual caramel on hand, I thought it’d be fun to experiment that a dessert that uses caramel and sub my date caramel!

These five-ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars are a simple, easy to make dessert and are perfect to have on hand for an after dinner treat!

Here’s how it breaks down:

  • The base layer is just Rice Chex cereal mixed with peanut butter.
  • The middle layer is date caramel.
  • And you top it all off with chocolate and pecans!

Think you can handle it? Here are the directions:

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5 Ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars

Frozen Turtle Bars 3
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These five-ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars are a simple, easy to make dessert and are perfect to have on hand for an after dinner treat!

Ingredients

Scale
  • 3 cups Rice Chex cereal, crushed
  • 1/2 cup nut butter
  • 2/3 cup date caramel
  • 3/4 cup chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Instructions

  1. Combine chex and nut butter in a bowl and mix until well coated.
  2. Press into the bottom of a foil-lined loaf pan.
  3. Top with a layer of date caramel.
  4. Freeze for 20 minutes.
  5. Melt chocolate chips, spread over caramel layer, top with pecans and press down lightly with your hands to make sure the pecans stick.
  6. Store in the freezer.

Notes

I’d recommend freezing for 2 hours or so, then removing, cutting into pieces and then storing in the freezer so it’s easy to just grab one and enjoy! They can be a little difficult to cut when fully frozen.

With just dates and water, you can make your own Date Paste (also know as date caramel) to add natural sweetness and flavor to desserts and baked goods.

In case you missed it, here’s my tutorial on How To Make Date Caramel.

These five-ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars are a simple, easy to make dessert and are perfect to have on hand for an after dinner treat!

Be sure to pin these for later so you remember to make them! I cut mine into bite-sized pieces so I can sneak 2-3 from the freezer each night 🙂

[Tweet “Try these 5 Ingredient Frozen Turtle Bars from @leangrnbeanblog for dessert tonight!”]

Enjoy!
–Lindsay–

For more recipes using new ingredients, check out the linkup below!


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Comments

  13. Oh my yummy! We don’t get a lot of turtles in these parts either – so I’m not too familiar with the chocolate, caramel and pecan thing either. But I do believe you’ve nailed it, My Dear! (That last ‘my dear’ would be a riff on the Southern belle Scarlett O’Hara) HeHe! I’ll be making these for sure….and cutting them in bite sized pieces just for me!

    Reply

  15. AHH I LOVEE making caramel from dates! I make an apple pie smoothie with it and oh myyy. These look DELICIOUS. Thanks for reminding me to make it again 🙂

    xo,
    Sarah Grace

    Reply

  16. Oh my! That date paste sounds awesome and then to put it in these bars. It’s totally happening as soon as I get my hands on some dates :-). Yum!

    Reply

  17. What a coincidence! I just posted a recipe using date caramel after getting into making it the past weeks, too, . Nature’s candy indeed and your idea of merging rice crispy treats with the caramel and chocolate is plain genius.

    Reply

  29. I made these tonight. Followed the recipe to the letter. The date caramel doesn’t really freeze. It turns almost like mushy ice. And, if I made these again, I would recommend crushing the Chex cereal or food processing them. I moved them from a loaf pan to an 8 x 8 as well because it didn’t all fit in the loaf pan. If I left them in the loaf pan, the bars would have been really high and would look nothing like your photos.
    The date caramel was much tastier freshly blended than frozen.

    Reply

    • Thanks for your feedback! I agree the chex should be crushed. i’ll make a note of them. Sorry they didn’t fit in your loaf pan, maybe mine was bigger? I agree that the caramel doesn’t freeze all the way but I liked it that way. Good news is there are lots of other things you can make with the paste itself if you liked it!

      Reply

  30. i found these difficult to cut, all the frozen chocolate crumbled and cracked unevenly… should i cut before freezing them?

    Reply

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Learn how food affects your body.

Get my free Table Talk email series where I share bite-sized nutrition information about carbs, protein, and fat, plus bonus information about snacks and sugar!