Saturday 8 April 2017

Currently Eating: Date and Oat Granola Bars


I get stressed when ingredients sit around unused for a long time. Letting food go bad is wasteful. Letting something sit forever, even if its not going to go bad, feels like clutter. I bought a gigantic tub of Medjool dates about....3 months ago, and we still haven't gotten half way through it. I stared at the box for so long, I had to find ways to use them and which didn't involve making more balls (there are two different ball recipes on the blog now...two! Here and here).


Enter the granola bar, or just granola if you want to break them up and eat with milk/yogurt/whatever.

Recipe stolen from Deliciously Ella and modified to suit my laziness and ingredient availability. This makes about 20 bars (about 3×1 inches big).


Ingredients:
4 tablespoons of chia seeds with 16 tablespoons of water

20 medjool dates (400g)
3 tablespoons of coconut oil
300ml of water

400g of oats

Add ons (choose about 300grams of add ons):
craisins
shaved roasted coconut
sunflower seeds
chopped walnuts
2 teaspoons of cinnamon

Mehthod:
1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Start your chia seed + 16tbs water mixture. Set aside and leave to develop a gel.
3. Melt coconut oil and dates in a pot. Break apart dates with a spatula. Add in the 300ml of water and whisk until smooth.
4. In another bowl, combine oats with your add-ons.
5. Combine date/oil/water mix into your bowl. 
6. Add in your chia gel.
7. Spread into a pan. Bake for 35 mins.
8. Let rest 15 mins then cut apart.

The original recipe called for sunflower seeds and raisins. As always, with bars and stuff, I always choose whatever add-ons I have around. 


I eyeballed the water when mixing the date/oil mixture and wish I hadn't since I ended up with less binder than I needed. I would probably have upped this recipe by at least 1 or 2 more dates as well.

If you wanted, you could probably bake change these into granola instead of bars. If so, I might consider using less water with your dates and not press them down too hard into the pan when baking.

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