I am constantly on the hunt for the perfect snack bar.

Ideally it’s one that doesn’t have a 600-word ingredient list or enough sugar to make my pancreas explode. However, it also shouldn’t taste like cardboard and cost more than half an hour of minimum wage.

Such a bar can be hard to find— both on campus and in grocery stores— so to bypass all the label-reading and the dissatisfaction of a sub-par snack food, I make my snack bars from scratch.

With plenty of resources online for inspiration, there are enough snack bar recipes out there to satisfy any craving or dietary practice. Additionally, most snack bars are forgiving when it comes to accidentally adding a little extra of this or that to ensure the final product is exactly what you want.

I recently stumbled across this recipe for almond butter and chia jam bars with chocolate on the mighty Internet and found it to be irresistibly tasty and packed with a trilogy of nutrients:

• Omega-3 fatty acids, fiber-loaded chia
  and flaxseeds keep your brain charged and your bowels healthy
• Protein-rich almond butter
  will keep you feeling satiated
• Dark chocolate to boost
  serotonin and put you in your happy place

With about five minutes of hands-on preparation, time and a short list of ingredients, these bars come together easily and taste too outrageously delicious not to try.

Almond Butter + Chia Jam Bars With Dark Chocolate

Makes 12 squares

Inspired and slightly adapted from This Rawseome Vegan Life

This recipe can easily be changed depending on your own taste preferences and what you have in your cabinet. Chia and flaxseeds can be found at any major grocery or natural foods store, including Trader Joe’s and Winco.

For the almond butter base

• 1 cup rolled oats

• 1/2 cup almond (or peanut butter)

• 1 tablespoon maple syrup (or honey)

• 2 tablespoons coconut oil, butter or other neutral oil

• 1/4 whole flax seeds

For the chia jam

• 1 cup fresh or frozen and defrosted berries

• 4 heaping tablespoons of chia seeds

For the dark chocolate

• 1 cup dark chocolate chips (70 percent or higher)

Base: Using a blender, food processor or coffee grinder, blitz the rolled oats into oat flour. Add the flour into a large bowl with the other base ingredients and mix well. Press the base into an 8×8 baking pan and set in the refrigerator to chill.

Jam: In the same bowl you used for mixing the almond butter base, mash the berries with a fork until they break down. Then stir in the chia seeds and let sit for 10 minutes. In this time, the chia seeds will absorb the berry liquid and thicken the mixture to form “jam.” With a spatula, spread the jam evenly onto the almond butter base and return the pan to the refrigerator.

Chocolate: To microwave chocolate, put the chocolate chips in a bowl and microwave for three minutes on low. During the three minutes, remove the bowl every 30 seconds to stir the chocolate. Once melted, spread the chocolate on top of the chia jam layer. Alternatively you can use the double boiler method.

Chill the bars in the freezer for 10 minutes before cutting. Bars will keep for at least a week in a sealed, refrigerated container or up to one month in the freezer.

Grace Kerfoot can be reached at [email protected] or @gracekerf on Twitter.