Breakfast Bars in the Blogosphere

Breakfast Bars

Last year I tripped over Nigella Lawson's recipe for Breakfast Bars shown above, photo courtesy of www.eatingoutloud.com, and they appealled to me for a few reasons. I am not a breakfast person, but the concept of a portable, healthful, low-fat snack (for anytime during the day, really) was a big seller. I liked the fact that these are easy to put together and that there are no added fats in the recipe, just oatmeal goodness enriched by seeds, nuts and dried fruit, bound together with a can of condensed milk.  Like eating cereal and milk, definitely a breakfast theme, but in a bar format. So, here I have been, happily munching on these great little goodies, never imagining that there is a bit of a Breakfast Bar "war" occuring in the blogosphere. One blogger called Nigella's bar a let down, saying they lacked flavour. I see them as a great base and a canvas for improvisation. Want more flavour? Add cinnamon and nutmeg! You love dried blueberries? Substitute them for the dried cranberries! Here is what I see as a chewy, moist, delicious, all-purpose Breakfast Bar recipe that you can play with and tweak to suit your own taste:

Nigella's Breakfast Bars

1 14-ounce can low-fat sweetened condensed milk; up to 1/4 cup of skim milk, if needed; 2+1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant); 1 cup shredded unsweetened flaked coconut; 1 cup dried cranberries; 1 cup mixed seeds (pumpkin, flax, sesame); 1 cup chopped walnuts.

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F and line a 9" x 11" pan with parchment paper or tin foil. Oil paper or foil. Stir together all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Pour in the condensed milk and stir to coat everything well, adding extra milk by the tablespoon if the mixture seems dry. You should be able to pinch some of the moistened oatmeal mixture and have it hold its shape. Press mixture down firmly into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour until firm and set. Let bars cool.  Remove bars from the pan by lifting the edges of the parchment or foil. Chill the mass before cutting if you want neat-looking slices. These keep very well in the fridge but I usually freeze them.

The Breakfast Bar debate on the blog www.eatingoutloud.com stipulates that Heidi Swanson's Big Sur Power Bars from www.101cookbooks.com are even better than Nigellas's, with spot-on texture and flavour. Heidi's recipe has more to it, at first glance, including some harder to find ingredients like natural cane sugar, brown rice syrup and unsweetened crisp brown rice cereal, nothing a trip to a health food store couldn't resolve. I don't really fancy the inclusion of ground espresso beans and would substitute 1 tsp. ground cinnamon instead. I have included other possible substitutions as well.

Heidi's Big Sur Power Bars

1 cup pecans, chopped; 1 cup slivered almonds; 2/3 cup unsweetend shredded coconut; 1+1/4 cups rolled oats; 1+1/2 cups unsweetened crisp brown rice cereal (Rice Crispies OK - "puffed" rice not OK); 1 cup brown rice syrup (honey OK); 1/4 cup natural cane sugar (brown sugar OK); 1/2 tsp. fine-grain sea salt; 2 tbsp. ground espresso beans (or 1 tsp. ground cinnamon); 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9" x 13" baking pan for thinner bars or an 8" x 8" pan for thicker bars. Toast pecans, almonds and coconut on a baking sheet in the oven until the coconut is golden, tossing once or twice along the way. Mix the oats, toasted nuts, coconut and cereal together in a large bowl and set aside.

Combine the rice syrup, sugar, salt, espresso and vanilla in a small saucepan over medium heat and stir constantly until it comes to a boil and thickens a bit, about 4 minutes. Pour the syrup over the oat mixture and stir until it is evenly incorporated.

Spread the mixture into the prepared pan and cool to room temperature before cutting into bars. 

Makes 16 - 24 bars.

Power Bars

Speaking out in the blogosphere about better Breakfast Bars is Allen, the owner of www.eatingoutloud.com. He proclaims deep respect for Heidi's Big Sur Power Bar recipe, but had his own personal problem to resolve and therefore revised the recipe to meet his needs. You, in all likelihood, will not have his problem, namely a bumper crop of hickory nuts needing to be used. He used hickory nuts instead of pecans. He likes dried blueberries and added 1 cup of dried blueberries, along with 1/4 cup of flax seeds and 1/3 cup of raw sesame seeds. Allen also decided that cinnamon was more appealing than espresso and used 1 tsp. cinnamon instead of ground espresso. Allen's Power Bars, derived from Heidi's, are shown above.

You are now fully equipped to form your own opinions on Breakfast Bars! Try them and speak to me. 

If you love Breakfast Bars, you probably need to read these books:

  A to Z bar cookies / by Simmons, Marie.

   Bars & squares : more than 200 recipes / by Snider, Jill.