Field Test: Homemade Clif Bars

Fueling up with one of my Clif Bars.

The overwhelming positive response to my Homemade Clif Bar post was a pleasant surprise! I had many people try the recipe for themselves over the weekend, several of whom added their own twists and variations, which is exactly what I wanted.

The feedback from those who tried the bars has been that they are very tasty, have a nice consistency, and are an all-around success. That's great, but it isn't enough. After all, these are supposed to be a homemade version of Clif Bars, not just a snack-time treat.

I therefore had to test the bars under the circumstances that I would use store-bought Clif Bars. What better way to do that than spending a little over 4 hours on the bike, covering about 83 miles?

When I ride at a pretty fast pace, I try to take in about 200 calories per hour. I like to get most of these calories from solid food, but I also use electrolyte and carbohydrate additives in my water which can add a fair amount of calories themselves.

In order to really get the full effect of these bars, I used very little water-additives in my bottles today. I calculated that this only added up to just shy of 100 calories. The rest of my fuel was to be had from my Clif Bars.

Because I did not want to overstuff my pockets, I took only 3 bars with me. I previously calculated the nutritional information of the bars and concluded that one bar is around 150 calories (A real Clif Bar has around 250 calories in it). In other words, I had 450 calories worth of homemade Clif Bars in my pockets. It's important when doing hard efforts to have very calorie-rich food sources so that you can fuel your workouts properly without having to feel gorged or feeling like your jersey pockets are so full that they are dragging you down. 2 store-bought Clif Bars would have given me 50 calories more than 3 of my homemade bars. The calorie to amount of food ratio is therefore much more favorable with real Clif Bars than mine, meaning that I need to make my next batch more caloric. 

I also feel like I can streamline the wrapping process to take up less space in my pockets. I didn't want to crush the bars and end up with crumbs, so I had to be fairly conservative. I wrapped each bar with a strip of parchment paper, stacked the 3 bars together and tried to flatten them a bit the way a butcher would do with burger patties. I then placed the stack in a ziplock bag. This took up most of the allotted space that I had for food on this particular ride. Winter rides always call for a bit more equipment in the pockets so space is fairly limited.

That aside, the bars were great! They delivered quick, but sustained energy, sat well in my stomach without slowing me down, and most importantly, they were downright delicious! What I liked about these bars over traditional Clif Bars is that they were a bit softer and easier to down. Traditional Clif Bars tend to be somewhat hard, especially when they are exposed to the cold Utah air. That's not much of a problem if you eat one while taking a gas-station break, but it is fairly annoying trying to chew and breathe when you're going 30mph. My homemade bars stayed soft enough to be edible, but hard enough to not fall apart.

What's my conclusion, then? There is no clear cut favorite when comparing this first batch of homemade bars to store-bought bars. With a few minor modifications in wrapping and calorie count, however, I think I can get my homemade bars to be better, in my eyes, better than store-bought Clif Bars.

In order to solve the wrapping issue, I may opt to wrap each bar in just enough parchment paper to not leave any parts exposed, and ditch the plastic bag idea altogether. I may sprinkle some powdered sugars on the bars as well to make sure that if my makeshift wrappers to open up while in my pockets, I will not end up with a sticky mess.

Now, that leaves the question of making these bars more caloric. This is hardly an issue! There are countless ways that I could do this. We're talking the addition of more nuts, chocolate, shredded coconut, etc. In other words, I get to add more delicious ingredients to my recipe. Cutting calories can be difficult, but I don't think anybody has ever had much trouble adding calories in their diet!

Lastly, I want to address the issue of cost. It's pretty difficult to assess the exact cost for making one homemade Clif Bar as I had a lot of ingredients on hand. If there is enough interest, I will go to my local grocery store with pen, paper and a calculator and figure out exactly how much it costs.