Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 397 kcal | 113 kcal |
| Protein | 10.3 g | 2.9 g |
| Fat | 22.1 g | 6.3 g |
| saturated | 4 g | 1.1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 36 g | 10.2 g |
| sugars | 23.5 g | 6.7 g |
| Fibre | 9.7 g | 2.7 g |
| Sodium | 10 mg | 3 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole oat groats
- 2 cups sunflower seeds
- 2 cups cashews
- 490 g cranberries
- 2 cups dates, finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 cup maple syrup
- 1 1/2 cups freshly ground flax meal
- 1 cup flax seeds
- 1 cup sesame seeds
Instructions
- Soak the oat groats, cashews and sunflower seeds in separate bowls overnight, and give the cranberries only an hour. Soaked together the groats colour everything else pink and the cashews take on the sunflower bitterness.
- Drain everything thoroughly and press the cranberries in a sieve. Any water still in the fruit has to come out on the tray, and it is the wettest thing in the bar.
- Blend the groats alone until they are roughly half their original size, then add the cashews and sunflower seeds and pulse briefly. Stopping short of a paste is what leaves this bar something to chew on.
- Tip that into a large bowl and stir the cranberries, sesame seeds and flax seeds through by hand. Whole seeds put through a blade turn oily and flat.
- Blend the dates, flax meal, coconut oil and maple syrup into a thick caramel and fold it through the dry mixture. The flax meal is what will hold the slab together once the moisture leaves, so work it through until no dry patches are left.
- Press the mixture onto a lined tray in one even slab and score it right through into bars. Press it firmly — an airy slab crumbles when you lift it, and a bar that is thicker at one end will never dry evenly.
- Give it 2 hours at 63 °C to set the surface, then drop the machine to 52 °C for 10 hours. The hot opening stage firms the slab enough to handle; the long cool stage is what dries the middle without cooking the nuts.
- Break the bars along the score lines and let them go cold before judging them. A finished bar holds its shape when you pick it up by one end and is chewy rather than wet at the centre; if it sags, it goes back on for another few hours.
- Wrap the bars individually and keep them in a sealed container for a fortnight, or freeze them for three months. Soaked cashews and ground flax both turn rancid quickly, and that happens long before the bars would go soft.
