Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 357 kcal | 101 kcal |
| Protein | 10.5 g | 3 g |
| Fat | 2.7 g | 0.8 g |
| saturated | 0.5 g | 0.1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 69 g | 19.6 g |
| sugars | 26.8 g | 7.6 g |
| Fibre | 12.4 g | 3.5 g |
| Sodium | 2 mg | 1 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
- 450 g sprouted buckwheat or quinoa
- 1 1/4 cups dates
- 1 1/4 cups dried apricots
- 1 1/4 tablespoons cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon cardamom
- 1 pear or apple, peeled, cored and diced
Instructions
- Sprout the buckwheat first if you are starting from raw groats: rinse, soak for a few hours, drain, and leave them in the jar until tails show. Only whole groats in their hulls will do this — toasted kasha never will.
- Rinse the sprouts twice a day while they work, and drain them properly each time. Buckwheat throws off a slime as it sprouts, and leaving it on gives the bars a sour edge.
- Soften the dates and apricots in warm water for twenty minutes if they have gone hard, then drain them well. Hard dried fruit will not blend to a paste and leaves gritty flecks right through the bar.
- Blend the dates, apricots, pear and spices into a paste before the buckwheat goes near the jug. That paste is the glue, and it has to be smooth before anything is asked to stick to it.
- Stir the sprouted grain through by hand. Blending it in destroys the crunch that makes these worth eating and turns the whole lot into a sticky ball.
- Press the mixture onto a lined tray at an even depth and smooth it with a wet spatula. Cut it into bars now, all the way through — a dried slab will not cut cleanly later.
- Dehydrate at 55 °C for 18 hours, moving the bars onto mesh once they are firm enough to lift in one piece.
- They are done when the surface has lost its shine, the bar holds together under a squeeze, and no fruit paste transfers to your fingers. Tacky bars are the ones that grow mould in a school bag.
- Wrap them individually and keep them in a jar for a month, or freeze them for six. Fruit sugar at this concentration pulls moisture out of the air, so a loose bag on the bench has them sticky within days.
