Choc date oat bars

Shop bought cereal bars very often contain a whole lot of ingredients that we don’t need, can’t pronounce and often they’re not school safe either (think nuts and certain seeds).

In our house we’ve been using the chocolate bars from Juice Plus+ for a long time, because although they’ve got lots of ingredients, they’re also packed full of great nutrition and they contain no nuts.

But, having recently discovered that my youngest daughter is sensitive to soybeans, I’ve had to come up with my own recipe.

To make around 12 bars, you’ll need the following: 

-200g dried fruit (I used dates and apricots, but if you only use apricots, your blood sugar will be more balanced)

-200g boiling water

-200g porridge oats

-100g coconut oil

-3 tbsp hulled hemp seeds

-1-2 tbsp cacao

-a good pinch of sea salt 

Method:

-Heat the oven to 160 C fan / 180 C. 

-Mix the fruit, boiled water and coconut oil and leave for about 20 minutes.
-After 20 minutes, use a food processor, or a hand held blender, and mix everything together until it forms a puré.

-Mix in all dry ingredients.

-Put mixture into an oven proof dish measuring around 25x25cm. I cover mine in baking paper, but coconut oil also tends to work.
-Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes.

-Let cool and then tuck in.

If you don’t need these for school lunches, I would recommend adding a couple of tablespoons of your nut butter of choice for extra fat and protein.

You could also mix in desiccated coconut if you like the flavour.