Recipe 3: Apple, oat and pecan bars

I must admit, the only time I tend to cook with oats is when making porridge which is a daily occurrence in our house. However, baking with oats? The only time I’ve encountered that is when Dear Mother makes what she calls Sugar Biscuits. You know the ones – porridge oats, sugar and I’m not sure exactly what else. My late grandmother used to make my father Sugar Biscuits on his birthday so my mother carried on the tradition after Granny’s passing which is a lovely thought I think. So, onto this week’s recipe and it involved oats as I made Apple, oat and pecan bars. Here’s how I made them…

I started off my peeling two Pink Lady apples – they’re my favourite brand of apple. I then cut them up into squares and threw them into the food processor for a blitzing. I then added softened butter and light brown sugar and let them cream in the processor for about 30 seconds. Once they had creamed up, I added in the porridge oats, two eggs, self-raising flour and pecan nuts. They all had a whirl together and then I tipped the mixture onto a Swiss roll tin which I had greased and lined with parchment paper. I gently smoothed out the mixture and evenly dotted 12 whole pecan nuts on top. Then, into the oven the tin went for 25 minutes. Once cooled, I let cut them up into 12 bars.

The verdict…

My first thought upon eating one of these was that they are obviously a healthier treat than most others – namely because of the oats and no icing! I gave them 7 marks out of 10. Dear Husband was less impressed – 4 marks out of 10. He said that if he ordered them as a dessert if he was in a restaurant, he’d have been disappointed. To me, that meant that they were not sweet enough and did not warrant being regarded as a dessert. However, that said, he did mention that a scoop of ice-cream or dollop of cream or toffee sauce wouldn’t have gone amiss – seeing as I was asking, of course!

I still liked these bars and I definitely think they could find themselves in my lunch box tomorrow and, with Dear Husband not liking them, all the more for me…