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Make your own organic energy bars

Energy Bars

Granola bars are a great blend of fruit and nuts held together in a tasty, chewy package that will travel well in your day bag or jersey pocket. The great thing with these home-made energy bars is that you can use fruit spreads as part of the paste to bind everything together, giving it more taste and more natural sugars too.

1. Preheat your oven to 190°C. Now line a 20cm round (or square) baking tin with greaseproof baking paper and thinly grease the inside of it.

2. In a large saucepan melt the butter, honey, fruit spread and sugar together on a medium heat, stirring until dissolved. Now bring it to the boil and cook for two minutes so that the sugar caramelises, making it a sticky sauce.

3. Add the oats and mix well then add all of the other fruits, nuts and seeds. Give this a good mix before pouring into the cake tin, patting down with the back of a metal spoon. Then place in the middle of the oven.

4. Cook for 15-20 minutes until set. If it starts to burn cover with foil. Once ready just turn it out and leave to cool on a rack, then slice into wedges to suit your appetite.

Chefs tips

This is a sweet snack thanks to the honey and fruit paste, but most of the sugars are slower burning fruit sugars so you shouldn't get a big rush/crash from these bars. Oats contain lots of soluble fibre that helps to regulate sugar release so this balances well with the sweetness.

This recipe does contain a lot of different ingredients so try shopping in a health food store that sells by weight so you can just get what you need. Alternatively, if you don't want to buy all that, just pick your favourites and add more of them, or swap the fruit paste for more honey, the walnuts for pecans and so on. As long as you get a thick, firm mixture to push into the cake tin you should find it's still super tasty.

Ingredients

- 80g butter
- 80g honey
- 40g pear and apricot or prune spread
- 80g dark brown sugar

- 120g jumbo oats
- 30g walnut pieces
- 30g sultanas
- 30g organic dried apricots

- 30g pumpkin seeds

- 30g sunflower seeds

- 30g linseeds

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