Fancy a bit of baking on this cold and rainy Sunday? How about these Granola Breakfast Bars. They make a handy grab it quick  and run out the door type of breakfast. Good for you too, with slow release oats and a bit of fruit in there as well.

Mike loves the Sainsbury granola bars. Those ones in the paper bags, sold by the bread.  I’ve been playing around with a recipe for a while now, trying to get it right. Think I’ve cracked it this time!

The bars need jumbo oats, and it’s quite hard knowing which ones are the jumbo ones on mySupermarket, so I’ve used the price of some I know are jumbo. If you can find cheaper ones, great. One of the dried fruits needs to be sharp and the cranberries are pretty essential. Either those or those sharp little dried Morello cherrries.

The other dried fruit I’ve used is raisins, for your purple portion, the hardest one to get.

As to the seeds, I think pumpkin are by far and away the best ones for these.

The water is needed to help the mixture stick together post baking. Without it, they were too crumbly. More water than this made them too stodgy.

Having said all that, you can of course, vary everything. Use currants and dried apricots; prunes and walnuts; sultanas and Brazil nuts. Add other seeds; sunflower, linseed or acai. Swap golden syrup for honey, agave syrup, date syrup or maple syrup. Use all jumbo oats, or all value oats.  If you need gluten free, make sure the packet says they are. Oats are naturally gluten free, but are often contaminated in the factory. And of course use gf flour, or swap the flour for corn flour. Savoury versions work fantastically too. Feta, olive and rosemary; sweet chilli and Parmesan; caramelised onion and feta. And change the butter for coconut oil if you don’t want the saturated fat in the butter, or to make it vegan.  Coconut has saturated fat too, but it’s better for you. It helps reduce the bad cholesterol in your blood and boost the good type.

 

Granola Breakfast Bars

Priced at Asda using mySupermarket
100g jumbo oats, £1.98/759g, 26p
100g value oats, 75p/kg, 7p
Tsp baking powder
50g sugar, 55p/kg, 3p
50g plain flour, 45p/1.5kg, 1p
30g pumpkin seeds, 80p/100g, 24p
50g raisins, £2.98/kg, 15p
25g dried cranberries, £1/100g, 25p
Generous pinch salt
100g butter, 85p/250g, 34p
50g golden syrup, £1.92/907g, 10p
25ml water

Total cost £1.45. Cut into 6, 24p each

Per bar, 490 calories, 44g carbs, 20g fat, 6g protein, 4g fibre

Mix all the dry ingredients, make sure they are well blended. Melt the butter, water and golden syrup. Tip into the dry ingredients and stir it all around.

I used a tin 7″/17cm square. Press the mixture well down to firm it all up. I didn’t line the tin, but you could if you wanted to.

Bake in a moderate oven for 20-25 minutes.

Leave to cool, then slice into 6. If you are making these for small children’s lunch boxes, you may need to cut them smaller. Half a bar would give them 245 calories.

Good for hollow legged teenagers too or active kids straight back from school and starving.