I have been looking around for snacks that I can make using the stuff we have in our pantry and have become interested in muesli bars, because we have bulk oats, they taste great and are good for you (or at least not too bad for you). One of the complicating factors has been that I don’t want muesli bars that are held together with peanut butter, due to some family digestive issues.
Well, I have finally found a recipe that seems to work pretty well, although it will need a bit of refining. I have already made some changes to the original recipe, which I will talk about later. The original recipe is part of a post on the YouTube channel called ‘Loeppkyslife’ and post is called “12 Beginner Staple Recipes Every Homemaker Should Know (so you can save $$ on your grocery bill)” and the link to their post is at the end of this article.
This is the original recipe:
Ingredients
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar
Splash of vanilla
3 cups oats
3 cups ‘cereal’ – rice bubbles
1 TBSP cinnamon
1/3 cup ground flax seed
Method
In a pot one the stove melt butter, honey and brown sugar together
Heat until it starts to bubble
Prepare pan by scrunching up parchment paper and the line the whole pan
Once the wet ingredients have started to bubble, add in vanilla, then the rest of the dry ingredients
Mix and then pour into pan (she does not say what size), even out and press down, place parchment paper on top and then press down hard so that they stay together
Place in fridge over night to harden up then cut up into bars, place into sealable containers
Our changes
I left out the cinnamon and ground flax seed, not being a fan of one and not having any of the other. To add some more flavour we added in ½ cup sultanas and ½ cup cashews from our pantry that I chopped up. Also, due to family dietary issues we substituted a dairy free vegan butter (Nuttelex® ‘Buttery’) for the butter component. The pan we had was 200mm x 300mm and seemed to do the trick.
During the mixing things together, whether due to the addition of the sultanas and cashews or the Buttery itself, the mix seemed somewhat dry, so I added an extra 1/3 cup of buttery.
The Results
The flavour was really good, if a little sweet for me, but the bars tended to fall apart, quite possibly because I did not apply enough pressure to compress the mixture sufficiently to hold together once removed from the tray.
Next time I will cut back on the honey and sugar, probably by about one third each and make sure that I use a potato masher or similar to apply extra pressure to the mix once it is in the tin.
Link: 12 Beginner Staple Recipes Every Homemaker Should Know (26min 15 sec)
