Make your own Gels

Hmm gonna give this a try I think.  I'll let you know how it tastes.

Homebrew Power Goop

• 7 and 1/3 tablespoons of honey
• 3/4 teaspoons of blackstrap molasses
• 1/10 teaspoons (just shy of 1/8 tsp) of table salt

Be sure to mix everything together well. It should make enough to fill a five-serving GU flask.

This recipe works nicely. You may see some bubbles on the surface, but that is just a natural occurrence of the molasses. Neither honey nor molasses needs to be refrigerated, so you can keep it in your pocket all day and even use it the following week. I probably wouldn't go much past a week, but it should still be good.
 

Honey Goop With a Protein Kick

• 6 tablespoons of honey
• 5/8 teaspoons of blackstrap molasses
• 6 and 3/8 teaspoons of soy protein isolate
• 1/16 teaspoons of salt
• 1-3 tablespoons of water

Mix everything together in a cup and add water as needed to develop a nice "goopable" consistency. Makes five servings.

Now that I've freed the masses from cookie cutter carb-gels, I would like to say that this is not the end, but merely the beginning. These are just my recipes and, like the open source code of Linux, they are open for improvement and personalization. I haven't even started on anything with caffeine, but I imagine that you could substitute some espresso for the water or get wild with some ground-up ginseng supplements.

There is also the issue of flavoring. Could normal coffee flavoring work? Perhaps you can mix in some flavored Jell-O or Kool-Aid mix, or stay all-natural and mix in some lemon or orange zest. How about a jalapeno or two? The possibilities are endless.

 

I've been thinking about making my own gels. But I don't think I'd like anything with honey and I know I don't like molasses.

Do you think I could do something with a banana base? I love bananas.

probably, but i'm not sure how it would hold up on a hot day.  Bananas start turning brown and icky pretty quickly.  Honey never goes bad.

They might work well in making your own powerbar type of recipe.
Active.come had a recipe for making your own powerbars also.
I'd see if you can find their recipe, you might be able to modify it to your taste.

Scott

I would love a good protein bar recipe. I have ones that taste like cardboard but have good stats and I have ones that taste good but are EXTREMELY high fat. Like 23 g of fat per 10 g of protein and 13 g of carbs!

Plus, the ones that taste good and are high fat don't keep in a purse or Bento box. They melt easily.

• I made these last night.  I was impressed with the taste and consistancy.  I will be making another batch but with some changes.
• This is the original recipe, I made some changes to this.  I will be trying to refine it reducing the sugar from the honey/light syrup.
• 3-1/2 cups rolled oats
• 3/4 cup light syrup (I used honey instead)
• 2 scoops (each scoop is about 4 tbsp.) protein powder – I used vanilla flavored; any flavor will work
• 1-1/2 cups nonfat dry milk
• 1 tbsp cinnamon (not used, I'm not a big cinamon fan)
• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 cup juice – I use orange/banana/pineapple juice; orange juice is fine
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 cup chopped dates (you can use dried cranberries, raisins, and chopped nuts, if you prefer.  I used a combination of Dates and cashews to come up with my 1 cup worth)
• 1-1/2 bananas, mashed

1. Thoroughly mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl
2. Mix all wet ingredients in another bowl
3. Add the wet stuff to the dry stuff and mix together thoroughly
4. Put spoonfuls on the waxed paper (or just use non-stick spray on cookie sheets if you prefer) and form into bars (I use a plain table knife for doing this.)  Spreading the spoonfuls out a bit as you put them on the paper makes this much easier. ( actually made mine in a mini muffin pan)  I made 40 of these in the mini muffin size, plus a little sampling while cooking,.  The original recipe said it would make 11 large bars. 
5. I plan to cut the honey in or remove it entirely.  I think I will mix up some pb2 and some apple or pear sauce for the next batch and see how that turns out.

These were very tasty, if you have ever tried them, they taste kind of like the "Aussie bites" sold at Costco.  I didn't have any problem with them sitting heavy in my stomach and no dumping.  Granted I wasn't out running.  I think I will use them as my post workout recovery meal.

Here is the nut data for the large size bars (11 of them) each bar is.  they are a 4:1 carb:protein ratio that I see listed on a lot of the replenishment  drinks/gels.  If you used the mini muffin pan like I did, the data would be 1/4 of what is listed here.

• 280 calories
• total fat: 1.9g
• saturated fat: .5g
• cholesterol: 10.2mg
• protein: 13g
• carbohydrates: 53.2g

Note that this is approximate as the size of the bars can (obviously) vary a bit, and is based on the recipe yielding only 12 bars. At that yield, the bars are akin to a supersized Clif bar.

How does this nutritional profile compare to commercially available energy bars?

	Homemade	Clif Bar	Power Bar	Gatorade Bar	4 Fig Newtons
Calories	280	240	230	260	220
Protein	13g	10g	10g	8g	2g
Carbohydrates	53g	44g	45g	46g	44g

As you can see, the homemade bars compare very favorably to the commercially available alternatives… and they taste great and are less expensive! Also, keep in mind that these bars are considerably larger than the store bought bars, so it’s a bit of an apples and oranges comparison…