Instructions

1. Toast the sunflower seeds in a dry pan until they smell nutty and darken a shade. Nothing else in these bars gets any heat, so this is the only toasted flavour available to them.
2. Grate the apples coarsely, skin and all, and use them immediately. Apple is the wet ingredient holding these together and it browns within minutes of being grated.
3. Blend the grated apple, raspberries and cranberry juice into a loose sauce. The raspberry seeds will survive the blender, which is fine — they add a grit these bars want.
4. Stir the granola, strawberries, honey, sunflower seeds, walnuts and cinnamon into the sauce and leave it to sit for ten minutes. The granola drinks the liquid and the mixture stiffens noticeably, which is how you know it will hold together.
5. Fold the chocolate chips in last, once the seeds have stopped feeling warm. Chips stirred into anything warm smear and turn the whole batch brown.
6. Spread the mixture 10 mm thick on a solid mat and press it down firmly with wet hands. Loosely laid granola dries into something that falls apart as soon as it is picked up.
7. Score the slab into bars before it goes in, cutting right down to the mat. A dried slab breaks along its own faults rather than along your lines.
8. Dry at 57 °C for 13 hours, flipping the slab onto mesh once the top is firm enough to lift in one piece.
9. They are ready when a cooled bar supports its own weight held at one end and leaves nothing on your fingers. Wrap them individually and keep them in the fridge for a fortnight or the freezer for three months — there is fresh fruit in here and the chocolate softens on a warm shelf.