Healthier Starbucks Bliss Bars with Cream Cheese Frosting | Gluten-Free

I'm showing you how easily you can make my healthier gluten-free version of the famous Starbucks Bliss Bar. They're naturally sweetened and made gluten-free with almond and oat flour. One of the secrets to making these bars so delicious is adding orange zest. So just take an orange and use your zesting grater and go ahead and just zest the outside peel. And you want to just get the orange part. You don't want to go any deeper into the white part because that's where it becomes more bitter. And then you want to end up with about one tablespoon of orange zest. And it's going to start smelling really good in your kitchen. And then we can set this aside. To make our cookie dough we want to first blend together our wet ingredients and our sweeteners. We're going to start with half a cup of cashew butter and you could use almond butter instead. And this is going to make it rich and creamy and it's a healthier substitute to butter. And then we'll add a fourth a cup of maple syrup, fourth a cup of coconut sugar, one teaspoon of vanilla extract, and to ramp up the orange flavor I'm going to add an eighth of a teaspoon of some orange extract. Now this is quite strong so you'll want to use it very sparingly. And our tablespoon of orange zest. And then I'll mix these on high until they're well combined. Now that it's really well mixed we can go ahead and add in one egg. And then we'll mix just until that egg is incorporated. And now we can add our dry ingredients which includes one cup of almond flour, a half a cup of oat flour, and then I have half a teaspoon of baking powder, half a teaspoon of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ginger, and a fourth of a teaspoon of salt. We'll just dump those right on top. And then we'll mix these together until we have a really soft cookie dough. Now we want to add a fourth a cup of our dried cranberries and a fourth a cup of white chocolate chips. And then we'll just barely mix these until they're incorporated. So the final consistency will be similar to a slightly sticky cookie dough. And now we can spread the dough into our pan. So I'm just going to use a spatula and dump it right into my pan. Now it will be a little bit sticky so I'm going to push my fingers in to hold my parchment paper in place. And then I'll push it out towards the edges. And having that parchment paper is going to make it so much easier for getting the bars in and out later. If you could use more healthy inspiration on a regular basis I invite you to join my email list. All you have to do is click on the link that's in the video description below and that is the best way for us to stay connected. And now that the dough is all spread out in the pan this can go into a 350 degree oven for about 12 to 14 minutes or just until those edges are starting to turn a really light golden brown. So here's a batch that I baked earlier and as soon as the pan came out of the oven I allowed it to rest on my counter until it was cool and then I placed it into my fridge so that it could cool completely. You can see how easy it is to lift it right up and out of my pan using my parchment paper. Now we'll want to make our cream cheese frosting. We're going to start with eight ounces of cream cheese or one block in a pan and you want it to be room temperature. Then I'm going to add half a teaspoon of vanilla and two pinches of salt and then I'm going to mix this on high until it's nice and smooth. Now the cream cheese is soft I'll go ahead and add half a cup of organic powdered sugar and you can use regular if you prefer and then I'll mix this in until it's well combined. Next we're going to melt down some white chocolate, mix that in with the frosting and then it's going to help it set just a little bit firmer on top of our bars. So I've added a fourth a cup of white chocolate chips to a microwave safe bowl and I'm going to heat this up in the microwave in 20 second intervals taking it out to stir in between until it's nice and melted. So after several 20 second intervals you can see that this white chocolate is nice and melted. So I'm just going to mix it for a second here just to break down any of those little clumps of chocolate. Now I'm going to pour almost all of it into my bowl of cream cheese frosting. I'm going to leave about oh a tablespoon of chocolate in the bowl to drizzle on top of the bars and then I'll just mix in the white chocolate till it's nice and smooth. Well now is a really good time to go in for a little pinky test. Just for quality control assurance, that's yummy. And now we can take our spatula and just spoon out our frosting and dump it right on top of our bars and this will give you a very generous amount of frosting which I am totally okay with. And now that we've spread our frosting nice and even on top of the bars we can go ahead and sprinkle on some more of our dried cranberries. And there's really no rhyme or reason to this but you do want to break them up so that you don't have any big chunks of cranberries because that will make it a little more difficult for when you're chopping through your bars. The final step to getting that beautiful Starbucks bliss bar aesthetic is to drizzle on some white chocolate. So I'm just going to take about the tablespoon of white chocolate still in my bowl and then I'm going to add in a half a teaspoon of some coconut oil because I want to dilute that chocolate so it's a little bit thinner. And then I'll put this back in the microwave for about 15 seconds just to melt down the oil and the chocolate. So now I'm just going to mix this together till it's nice and smooth. And softening the chocolate with the coconut oil will keep it from cracking when you're cutting through your bars after it cools. Now we can simply drizzle it on top of the bars and it creates that beautiful striping across your dark cranberries. Now you want to put this into your fridge to allow the cream cheese and the chocolate to cool and set. If you're in a hurry you can also put it into your freezer. Since I'm a little on the impatient side I'm going to put it in my freezer. So I have here one of my cooled and cut bliss bars and compared to the Starbucks bliss bar I think it's a dead ringer. They both have that delicious thick cookie layer and then they get the thick layer of cream cheese frosting with the cranberries on top and the white chocolate drizzle. But the real question is how does it taste? So good! That tastes incredible. As soon as you bite in you get that delicious sweet cookie and then you crunch into a white chocolate chip and then you get that kind of sweet tartness coming from the cranberries and then that cream cheese frosting just kind of fills in all around it. And then you get just a little bit of crunch coming from the white chocolate on top. Compared to the Starbucks bliss bar I love the added depth of flavor that you get from the coconut sugar and the maple syrup as well as from that oat flour and the almond flour compared to the refined white sugar and flour that's in the Starbucks version. Now of course it is a treat and needs to be eaten in moderation but at least you know you're eating something with clean natural ingredients that leave me feeling just as good even after I eat it. Well thank you so much for hanging out with me today in my kitchen and I've included a link in the video description below to my website where you get the full recipe at gentletummy.com and I invite you to like and subscribe to my channel. And if you know someone else who you think would love this recipe please share this video with them and I cannot wait to have you hang out with me again in my kitchen.