Home Made Cereal Bars. (Cereal Bars in General)

Member Name: terasahunt

Product:	Cereal Bars in General
Date:	30/03/09 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Contain natural ingredients, easy to make, delicious.

Disadvantages: Still contain fats and sugar.

Home Made Cereal Bars.

There's nothing like a cereal bar for a healthy snack alternative. Unfortunately a lot of ready made cereal bars are not quite as healthy as we are led to believe. They can be full of sugar, topped in chocolate and even full of additives and other potentially harmful chemicals. Saying this, more companies are now becoming more health conscious and are trying to improve their recipes. It is for these resons that I now make my own (although this recipe does include sugar and fats, they are the natural types at least).

My favourite bars are apple and raison, and here's how to make them.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups of self raising flour.
1/2 cup of sugar.
1/2 cup of chopped apples (cut into very small pieces).
1/2 cup raisons.
1 tablespoon of golden syrup.
2 cups of oats.
150g butter.


Method:

1. Sieve the flour into a large mixing bowl.

2. Add the sugar, oats, chopped apples and raisons into the bowl and mix.

3. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Once melted, add the golden syrup to it and mix well. Remove from heat.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ones and give it a good stir.

5. Pour the mixture into a slice tray/small roasting tray, and compress it (to make sure it binds well).

6. Bake at 160 degrees for approx 15 - 20 minutes (until golden brown) .

7. Upon removing from the oven, immediately cut into bars.

8. Leave to cool before removing the bars from the tray.


This recipe can be adapted. For example you can use wholemeal self raising flour instead of white. You can also use chopped pears instead of apples, or even combine the two.
Another benefit of this particular recipe is that it's high in fibre (due to the oats) and you are using fresh fruit.
They are easy to make, but you do need to make sure that you compress the mixture well once in the slice tray, or the mixture won't bind properly and the bars will fall apart when you try and remove them.

They save quite well as long as they are kept covered, so there's no need to eat them all in one day!

Summary: Great natural sugar fix!