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homemade breakfast bar recipe

Homemade Breakfast Bar - Chewy Blackstrap Molasses

Chewy breakfast bars made from healthy, blackstrap molasses and peanut butter
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Course Breakfast, Snack
Cuisine American, British
Servings 12
Calories 197 kcal

Equipment

  • Mixing bowl
  • Wooden spoon
  • Small, thick bottomed saucepan
  • 6" by 8" baking tin

Ingredients
  

  • ½ cup of blackstrap molasses
  • cup crunchy or smooth 100% peanut butter
  • 2-3 tbsp maple syrup
  • 3 cups porridge oats steel cut may not bind as well, so the finer grain works better
  • cup sultanas or raisins
  • ½ cup pumpkin seeds
  • Pinch of salt only if your peanut butter is salt free

Instructions
 

  • Line a 6" by 8" tin with foil or parchment paper. If you use another size, you may need to adjust cooking time by a few minutes either way
  • Gently melt your peanut butter in a medium sized saucepan over a low heat. Do not over heat or it will stick and burn fast!
  • Once melted (or at least softer), add your molasses and maple syrup. Let it soften, but again, be very careful your molasses doesn't burn. The idea is just to soften everything enough to be able to bind you dry ingredients into it.
  • Once softened, turn off heat completely and add all your other ingredients to the saucepan
  • Mix to combine with a wooden spoon. It will be a really thick, sticky mixture but that's how it's supposed to be. The idea is to coat your dry ingredients, so if you need to add a touch more molasses then you can, but it the mix needs to be very thick and sticky for it to stay together.
  • Next, press your mixture down really hard into your pre-lined tin, making sure to press into the corners properly. You don't want any stray bits sticking up because they will burn pretty quickly in your hot oven.
  • Bake on the middle shelf of your oven for 18-20 minutes. You will need to check them to make sure they are not burning, but you will find it's almost impossible to not get a little burnage on the top, simply due to the fact that the molasses is so dark and so easy to burn. In fact (as you can see from the images) they can look over-done even when they aren't, simply because of the jet black molasses. They still taste delicious though, I can 100% assure you.
  • Remove your bake from the oven and pull the whole thing out of the tin by the sides of the tin foil or parchment paper. Be very careful with this process because they are still hot and prone to crumbling until they cool down and 'set', so, to avoid this, do not remove your tin foil or paper yet. Now place the whole bake on a wire wrack for 10 minutes to partially cool.
  • After around 10 minutes (or once they have semi cooled) you can take them off the wrack whilst still in the tin foil, then set down on a flat surface (preferably a big chopping board). Use a large chopping knife to very gently cut out your slices whilst still leaving the whole bake together in the tin foil or parchment paper. You should be able to cut 8-12 slices depending on how big you would like them. To have enough for a complete breakfast bar, you will probably just want to cut into around 8 good sized slices, then snack size bars can be smaller.
  • Replace carefully back onto your wire wrack, again, still keeping the whole thing together in the tin foil or parchment paper.
  • Leave to cool completely before you begin to remove your tin foil. Doing it this way is the only way to ensure they are hard enough to stay in one piece, otherwise you'll end up with granola!
  • Store in an air-tight container. I like to refrigerate mine to keep them really hard and chewy (probably not good for dentures), but to keep them softer, just store in a cool dry place.
  • These will keep for up to 1 week in the refrigerator and around 4 or 5 days in the cupboard.

Video

Keyword blackstrap molasses, breakfast bar, chewy, whole foods plant based