Sunday, August 17, 2008

Adventures in Baking

Ok, I don't really know what's gotten into me, but I've had the urge to bake something for the past few days, and so this morning I did some research and right now I am baking something that might be the most awesome thing ever.

Oatmeal Breakfast Bars, people. Following the advice of some of the reviewers, I substituted Splenda for sugar and apple sauce for oil, so this recipe is pretty much 100% healthy (if you ignore how much sugar is in dried fruit of all types). And, for those of you who care about such things, it's vegan. That's right: no dairy, no eggs. It also doesn't use flour or any wheat products. I suppose if one wanted to go crazy, one could even make it using only organic ingredients, but Crazy had to draw the line somewhere and so she bought the cheap-ass Quaker oatmeal and not the Red Mill fancy kind, and she bought Kroger nuts, because dude, nuts are nuts.

And it took no time at all to do the prep. And my house smells DIVINE. Ooh! and now they're done! And they are delicious! And nutritious!

I feel like I am going to make a version of this once a week (changing up the nuts and fruits, etc.) to have for satisfying snacking and breakfast-on-the-go needs.

9 comments:

Fifi Bluestocking said...

Sounds great! I'm going to try this - thanks!

k8 said...

That looks good. I might have to try it out. I was planning to try out this recipe: [http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/RecipeDisplay?RID=40], but now I might need to try out both. I'm thinking that dark chocolate chunks might be a nice addition.

gwinne said...

Sounds great! I've been trying to make my own granola bars and they never come out to my liking. Little Gwinne and I don't eat wheat or dairy, so this is perfect!

Belle said...

Okay. If you don't have oat flour, have you tried the blenderizing of oats? Does it work? Anybody?

Because I too am going to make these for snacking and brekkies as I'm too damned lazy to make breakfast every day. But I'm going to make them in my new kitchen (being installed as I write this!)!!

Which means somebody needs to tell me about the oat flour thing.

Dr. Crazy said...

I didn't buy oat flour, Belle - just put the oats in the food processor and voila! oat flower. I'd estimate that about 2-ish cups of the oats makes about 1 1/2-ish cups of oat flour (though don't bank on my measurements - I just sort of put as much as seemed right and it worked).

My report is that it worked perfectly, and took only about 3 minutes to do.

The History Enthusiast said...

I'm gonna do this too!

I think I'll make mine with almonds, dried apricots, craisins, and raisins.

Do you have any idea how long these will last? I am assuming that you can freeze the extra?

AAYOR said...

We're totally a brekkie bar family, and I don't have a recipe that I love, so I'm trying these. Now, in fact. There are 24 mins to go.

I used apple juice for the liquid (its a local organic juice that's more like a cider) and half organic apple sauce half organic apple butter for the oil. And dried apples for the fruit. Skipped the nuts, but if these work out I'll try ground almonds since i have 20 tons of almonds in the freezer for some reason.

I'm already planning other versions... doesn't a pbutter one sound good? I wonder what i could use for the liquid? Maybe just plain water. Ooh... pbutter and chocolate chips. That sounds like exactly what 'I'd' want for breakfast!

Thanks, Craz-eh!

jo(e) said...

I am definitely going to try these.

AAYOR said...

Verdict: these have potential but I need to work on getting the right combination of elements. I think that 30 mins is not long enough and I think that I'm going to try using a cookie sheet (like maybe a jelly roll pan) instead of the 13x9 dish. The flavor was good, but the texture just wasn't quite right with my substitutes. They came out kind of rubbery (the dried apples may have contributed since those tend to be kind of rubbery, too). Maybe I'll add a little baking soda, too, to lighten them up?

Did anyone else try them? What was the texture like?