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Why It Works
- A mixture of dried fruits, seeds, and fruit preserves provides a compelling combination of flavors, colors, and textures.
- Toasting the oats with brown sugar and honey sooner than mixing with the alternative elements creates a deep butterscotch style.
- Creamy nut butter (or sunflower butter) binds the oats and seeds collectively so the bars preserve their kind when sliced.
Breakfast bars are good for a meal on the run or a day nibble, nonetheless whereas it’s tempting to reach for a store-bought bar, they’re often too sweet, aggressively spiced, and each so chewy they follow the roof of your mouth, or dangerously arduous with jagged edges that cut back into your tongue. To stay away from this, we encourage you to take the (largely hands-off) time to make your particular person at dwelling with our easy recipe for do-it-yourself breakfast bars that are flippantly sweet, filled with style, and have merely the perfect texture.
Our good bar is hearty with a crunchy exterior that provides technique to a softer, chewier coronary heart. It’s correctly seasoned, with solely a contact of caramelized sweetness and a kaleidoscope of dried fruits, toasted oats, and crunchy seeds, plus it requires little higher than tossing all of the items collectively, pressing into the pan, and refrigerating until company. To get to this good consequence, we requested our check out kitchen colleague Renu Dhar to methodically make batch after batch of seed-filled bars to offer you healthful and satisfying breakfast bars.
Solutions for Do-it-yourself Breakfast bars
Toast the oats. We found that toasting the oats with a little bit of oil, brown sugar, and honey sooner than mixing them with the alternative elements truly deepened the bar’s final style. The oil, brown sugar, and honey flippantly caramelize the surface of the oats to create a rich butterscotch style. It requires merely half-hour of hands-off baking and cooling time, which can be achieved in case you are preparing the alternative elements.
Use a mixture of sweeteners. To current the bars a nuanced, mild sweetness with out overpowering the earthy seeds, the bars are sweetened with a mixture of brown sugar, honey, and finely chopped dates. The sticky honey and dates not solely current sweetness, however as well as help the bars preserve collectively. A swirl of your hottest sweet fruit preserves folded into the oat mixture sooner than pressing it into the pan extra sweetens the bars and gives one different style dimension. We love them with cherry preserves, nonetheless raspberry, strawberry, or blueberry all work splendidly.
Add a variety of seeds. Chia seeds, hemp seeds, and sunflower kernels boast assorted nicely being benefits, nonetheless nonetheless moreover they ship a variety of crunchy textures and savory nutty flavors to the social gathering
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Bind all of it together with nut or seed butter. . A creamy nut or seed butter of your choice not solely gives you a chance to extra customise these bars collectively together with your hottest style profile, it’s moreover the essential factor sticky ingredient for binding the elements collectively. Be comfortable to utilize peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter, or sunflower butter—the latter is an excellent choice if you must stay away from tree nuts or peanuts resulting from allergy signs.
This recipe was developed by Renu Dhar; the headnote was written by Leah Colins.
Put together dinner Mode
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Put together dinnering spray
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1 1/2 cups uncooked outdated model rolled oats (5 1/2 ounces; 156g)
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2 tablespoons mild brown sugar (5/8 ounce; 20g)
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1 tablespoon (15ml) extra-virgin olive oil
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3 tablespoons (45ml) honey, divided
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5 medium pitted Medjool datesroughly chopped (about 1/2 cup)
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3/4 cup (180ml) unsweetened creamy sunflower seed butter, peanut butter, almond butter, or cashew butter
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1/4 cup unsweetened dried blueberries, raisins, currents, chopped dried figs, or dried cranberries (1 3/4 ounce; 50g)
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1/4 cup chia seeds (1 1/2 ounces; 45g)
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1/4 cup hemp seeds (1 3/8 ounces; 40g)
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1/4 cup raw unsalted sunflower kernels (1 1/4 ounces; 40g)
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2 tablespoons (30ml) fruit preservesequal to blueberry, cherry, or raspberry
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1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
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Modify oven rack to middle place and preheat oven to 325°F(160℃). Coat an 8-inch sq. baking pan with cooking spray; line bottom and sides with parchment paper, leaving a 2-inch overhang on all sides. Line an enormous baking sheet with parchment paper. Set every aside.
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In a medium bowl, stir oats, brown sugar, oil, and a few tablespoons of the honey until correctly blended. Unfold oat mixture evenly onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake, stirring every 5 minutes and returning to a wonderful layer, until golden brown and crisp, about quarter-hour. Let cool totally on a wire rack, about quarter-hour.
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Whereas oats are cooling, in a meals processor, course of dates and seed or nut butter until straightforward, 1 to 2 minutes, scraping down sides of processor bowl as needed.
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In an enormous bowl, stir collectively the cooled oats, sunflower butter mixture, dried fruit, chia seeds, hemp seeds, sunflower kernels, fruit preserves, salt, and remaining 1 tablespoon honey until correctly blended and the mix holds collectively, 1 to 2 minutes.
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Unfold oat mixture firmly into the underside of prepared baking pan, using bottom of a greased measuring cup to press proper right into a flat even layer. Press plastic wrap immediately onto flooring of oats mixture; wrap baking pan in additional plastic wrap, and refrigerate until chilly and company, on the very least 8 hours or as a lot as 3 days.
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Take away and discard plastic. Using parchment overhang as handles, take away bars; place on a slicing board. Reduce bars into 1 1/4- x 4-inch squares. Serve or refrigerate in an airtight container for as a lot as 3 weeks.
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Explicit Gear
8-inch sq. baking pan
Make-Ahead and Storage
Refrigerate portioned bars in an airtight container for as a lot as 3 weeks.