Save yourself a packet! Muesli bars you can make at home

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 14

Save yourself a packet! Muesli bars you can make at home

Alison Holst’s

Food Facts

If you are paying large amounts of money buying “muesli bars” you may be interested in a recipe for making them yourself. As you would expect, the homemade version is very much cheaper than the commercial variety, and you can vary the flavourings youself. You can have apricot one week, apple and cinnamon another time, fruit and nut when it suits. You will probably enjoy making many other variations that can be your own speciality. You start by boiling up an interesting toffee-like mixture, you stir a variety of toasted or plain cereals into this, then you add whatever additions you want to flavour the mixture. The mixture is pressed firmly into a sponge roll tin, cut when cool, then left to get quite cold and hard. You finish up with about 40 25 gram bars — 1 find it very satisfying to work out how much this number of bars would have cost me to buy. You might like to do the same! IOOg butter % cup brown sugar y 2 cup honey 54 cup peanut butter 2 cups rolled oats 1 cup coconut 1 cup rice bubbles 2 cups cornflakes (crushed after measuring) 54 cup chopped dried apricots OR 54 cup mixed currants and walnuts 1 teaspoon mixed spice 1 teaspoon vanilla Measure the first four ingredients into a large

frying pan. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves, stirring frequently to squash the lumps of peanut butter. Boil gently for 8 to 10 minutes or until a few drops of mixture form quite a firm chewy ball when dropped into a small dish of cold water. OR: Microwave, stirring occasionally until sugar melts in a container which will not melt at toffee temperature — Coming ware, heat resistant glass, or high qualify microwave-proof plastic — until it makes a chewy ball in cold water (about 6 While the above mixture cooks, prepare the dry ingredients. Spread the rolled oats on a sponge roll tin or oven tray and toast it, about 10cm from the heat until it browns slightly and smells toated. Stir it once or twice. Toast the coconut in the same, way, browning it slightly. (If you replace some of the rolled oats and coconut with flaked oats or other cereal, and oat bran, toast these too.) Note: You can use all these cereals untoasted, but the flavour is not quite as good. Mix the rice bubbles and crushed cornflakes (or up weetbix

etc) with the toasted cereals. Add whatever ; dried fruit, nuts, seeds, etc. you are using. There ’ should' be six cups altogether. Stir these into the hot toffee mixture with , the mixed spice and van- ’ ilia. Press the hot mixture 1 firmly into a buttered or ; sprayed sponge roll tin, so i that it forms a neat : rect- 3 angle and is about 15mm k thick. Leave to cool for * about half an hour, then* cut into about 40 pieces ■ using a sharp serrated « knife. Leave to cool com- - pletely, then store in air- “ tight containers. Variations * 1. Replace half or all« the rolled oats with flaked .< oats or with other flaked ’ whole grains. 2. Replace half the' coconut with oat bran. } 3. Replace the cooked ■ cereals with other cooked cereals, * crushing large flakes. 4. Replace apricots, cur- • rants and walnuts with ’ chopped dried apples, I toasted slivered almonds, 4 toasted sunflower seeds,.’ tohsted sesame seeds, chopped roasted peanuts ’ etc, as desired. I Cut into much bigger ; pieces and - wrap these ,j individually.