Foodie Friday #2 – Leftover Christmas Date & Nut Oat Bars

Everyday after school the boys ask the same question: “what’s for snack?” Unfortunately a banana or apple just doesn’t cut it so I end up spending a fortune on Bear YoYos or various cereal bars.

So in the spirit of saving money in January, I decided that we were going to make our own bars!

I looked up various recipes and this one is basically a combination of a few different ones, and it works really well.

It dawned on me that making oat bars is actually a great way to get rid of some dry ingredients from your cupboards. We had a bowl of nuts left over from Christmas and a pack of dates, so we decided to call this recipe “Leftover Christmas Date and Nut Oat Bars”

You will need:

200g oats
90g honey
90g peanut butter
160g dates
130g nuts (we used hazlenuts, a few walnuts and then the remainder of a bag of mixed nuts and raisins)

1. We started by taking the stones out of the dates and cracking the nuts. The boys really got involved here and there was definitely a bit of “one for me, one for the bowl” going on when they were de-stoning the dates!

2. When the dates were ready we popped them into our Nutribullet and processed them until they they formed a squidgy dough like consistency – this will help bind the bars together later.
3. We measured out the oats and popped them into a bowl with the nuts and dates.
4. Next we mixed the peanut butter and honey in a small pan and heated it over a low heat for a minute or two.                                                          
5. We added the honey and peanut butter mixture to the bowl with the oats, nuts and dates and gave everything a good mix together.
6. Next we lined a smallish baking dish (or you could use anything really, a cake tin, a shallow pan, a loaf tin etc) with baking parchment and transferred the mixture in.
7. We all helped to press the mixture down so that it stuck together well. 
8. The dish went into the fridge for half an hour to set, before we took it out and cut into bars.

And Tah Dah:

As you can see, a few raisins made it into the mix when we were using up the pack of mixed nuts and raisins and actually they worked really well so I would definitely add them in next time.

Our reviews: 

Freddie: “I really enjoyed making them but I don’t really like the nuts.” Score: 3.5/5

Xavi: “I liked getting the stones out of the things (he means the dates) and I love the bars, they’re yummy” Score: 4/5

These oat bars were fairly simple to make and were a great way of using up some old ingredients. I would say that these were actually a bit dry and next time I would reduce the amount of dry ingredients, or make more of the honey and peanut butter mixture.

To make them more exciting for the kids, I think I might add in some chocolate chips next time.