Almond Butter Monster Cookie Smores Bars

I haven’t given a proper update on how things are going since I decided to try an elimination diet a few months ago. As you can probably see from these bars, I have abandoned the elimination diet entirely.

I strictly followed the plan I shared with you all for about three weeks, and then loosened it up a bit to follow a mostly paleo diet. I followed the paleo diet about 90% of the time for about six weeks and last week decided to ditch it completely. I saw very minor improvements in my skin, and I’m not even sure if those changes were actually due to my diet.

I saw a dermatologist last week who agreed that following a strict skin-friendly diet (whatever that means for you) might help improve acne by 10-20% but would not solve the entire issue (at least not for me). He put me on a low dose of antibiotics and I will have a check up in 3 months to see how things are going.

In the past week I have eaten pretty much whatever I wanted and I haven’t seen my skin get significantly worse, so I’m starting to believe what he said.

It’s been a very frustrating journey thus far and I’ve definitely shed some tears, but I’m hoping the antibiotics help my skin improve. Fingers crossed.

Enough about my skin, let’s talk about these bars! Today we are celebrating that Recipe Redux is 24 months old. I feel like a proud momma! I guess I could say it’s two years old, but our challenge this month was to open a cookbook and make a healthier version of whatever recipe is on page 42 or 142. I used The Cookie Dough Lover’s Cookbook and decided to redux a recipe for cookie dough smore’s.

Instead of regular old cookie dough I decided to make monster cookie bars, mostly because I’ve been dreaming about monster cookies lately. Monster cookies usually have peanut butter, oats, chocolate chips, and M&Ms in them. I swapped almond butter for the peanut butter because that’s what I had on hand.

I wouldn’t exactly call these bars healthy, but I did try to make the cookie part lower in sugar than other monster cookies since I figured the graham crackers, marshmallows, M&Ms and chocolate chips would do the work.

I took these bars to a party yesterday and they got rave reviews so I’m confident you’ll love them too!