Muesli Bars

[Anyone]

Does anyone have a good recipe for a really hearty muesli bar for teenagers who do a lot of sport and need a decent snack?  I find the store bought ones are too light and have too much stuff in it that I can't pronounce, let alone know what it is.

[not tried]

I've seen loads of recipes on the internet for them but I haven't actually got around to making any yet so I can't offer up a recipe that I know works well. 

However, you could try this one to start:

2 tbsp sunflower seeds
2 tbsp pumpkin seeds
2 tbsp linseeds
2 bananas, about 300 g (10½ oz) in total, weighed with their skins on
100 g (3½ oz) unsalted butter
3 tbsp golden syrup
50 g (1¾ oz) millet flakes
100 g (3½ oz) rolled oats
100 g (3½ oz) stoned dried dates, roughly chopped

1.   Preheat the oven to 180ºC (350ºF, gas mark 4). Grease a 28 × 18 × 4 cm (11 × 7 × 1 1/2 in) cake tin and line the bottom with baking parchment. Roughly chop the sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and linseeds. Peel and roughly mash the bananas.
 
2.   Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the golden syrup. Add the chopped seeds and mashed bananas, together with the millet flakes, rolled oats and dates. Mix together well, then spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface.
 
3.   Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden brown. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then mark into 14 bars and leave to cool completely. The bars can be kept in an airtight tin for up to 2 days.
 


It's from one of those sites where people add their tips and experiences and some people said they didn't put any seeds, millet or linseed in as they didn't have it, they just made up the weight in oats and they still turned out OK......so you'd have to experiment and see how it went if you didn't want to be faffing around buying ingredients you might not use again.

[Anyone]

Thanks for that PP, it looks like a good one.  I have googled until I am blue in the face and just got fed up so thought I would try here incase anyone had a tried and true.

Haven't seen one with bananas in it before, I guess that is why the only lasts 2 days.  Mind you, 2 days is going good in this house!

[ex-pat]

I think some people call them Granola Bars or Flapjacks depending on where you are from.  Perhaps that is why you didn't get many recipes.

[Unhealthy]

The butter and carbs will make you fat.

[yummybars]

We love these. Believe it or not they are taken from Annabel Karmels children's cook book. They are delicious. Even my husband takes them to work.

Ingredients:
Group (A):
80g butter
60g brown sugar
45g (3 tbsp) golden syrup
Pinch of salt

Group (B):
130g porridge oats
70g chopped dried apricots
25g dried cranberries
25g pumpkin seeds
15g (2 tbsp) sunflower seeds
25g dessicated coconut

Methods:

Preheat oven to 180°C.
Line the base and sides of a 20cm (8 inches) square baking tin with grease proof paper.
Mix all Group (B) ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.
In a saucepan, melt Group (A) ingredients over low heat. Stir the mixture occasionally until the butter has completely melted. But do not let the mixture boil.
Stir in Group (B) mixture from step 3 and mix together until everything is well combined.
Spoon the mixture into the baking tin and spread the mixture evenly on the tin. Press down to level the surface with a spoon/ potato masher.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and mark into slices. Leave to cool completely in the tin. Then chill in the fridge for 1 hour and cut into bars before serving.

[to unhealthy]

a good muesli bar with no nasty additives is perfect for sporty teenagers....they are still growing and use so much energy.  oats and dried fruit are great fibre sources - beats the crisps and sweets i see loads of teens eating.  it's when they reach their inactive 20's we need to cut back on the fats and carbs!

[not tried]

The butter and carbs will make you fat.

There are a few posts telling people that certain food items they were asking about are unhealthy; there was another with the same name on the parents board - I think it's the same person.

They do have fat and sugar in them, but I've tried making them with less fat and they fall apart so I'm not sure what the answer is to trying to make them healthier.  However, they do provide more fibre and things than the average biscuit so that can't be too bad.

Thanks for that PP, it looks like a good one.  I have googled until I am blue in the face and just got fed up so thought I would try here incase anyone had a tried and true.

They go by various names depending where people are from.  There are a few cook sites that I check for recipes but I've found that if you type in 'cereal bars' you get loads of recipes by people who think that chucking half a packet of Cheerios into a pan with melted butter and syrup makes for a healthy snack        So you have to type things like 'apple and oat bars' and 'apricot nut bars' and things to get what you're looking for.