Making Cereal Bars

Mornings are a slightly rushed affair in our house. And although I have a full bowl of muesli every morning (and have done since I was about 7 years old), my wife insists on having a "cereal bar".

As I do the food shopping I really begrudge buying these bars, for the same price as my big bag of muesli you get around 10 tiny bars. This set me thinking as to whether we could make our own - the "we" as it was Daddy-Daughter Monday.

Ready for some stirring

We decided to look at recipes on the Internet and find the one that was either - a) looked the easiest or b) contained ingredients we had in the store cupboard. This didn't really happen, so I decided to "adapt" a recipe (how many meals I wrecked from doing this I've lost count).

Quite a few ingredients

We brought a host of dried fruit and seeds during the weekly shop and when we got some we set to it.

The ingredients were -
200g of rolled oats,
100g of rice crispys (or cheap rice snaps as I bought),
200g unsalted butter ,
6 table spoons of golden syrup,
two table spoons of linseed,
two table spoons of pumpkin seeds,
two table spoons of sunflower seeds,
100g of dates and dried apricots,
Some currents for good measure.
two bananas mushed up

Quality control was tough...

Nothing too tough about this - melt the butter, chop everything up (fruit and seeds) and mix it all together. Bake it for 20 minutes and then see that it doesn't really stick together. I was a bit disappointed about this, I think maybe it was my addition of the rice crispys that might have done it (I wanted to make sure it wasn't like flapjack) or the fact that I only put in half the golden syrup in by mistake!

Almost bar like

Some of it made good bar like chunks though and my wife had it for breakfast this morning and said how nice it was.

It was also a great way to spend an afternoon with my baby, as she loved every minute, she talked me through every step, stirred the mixture and tasted all the different fruit and seeds that went into it (although she wouldn't lick the spoon at the end - I had to instead!).

So it wasn't a complete failure but wasn't quite as cereal bar like as I was hoping, maybe next time.

 Has anyone else made cereal-type bars (not flapjack I can make that) and if so were they any good?