Thus Bakes Zarathustra

Here’s the thing: I get really hungry between meals when I’m in my office cranking the thesis mill. It could be procrastination, it could be my powerlifting-enhanced metabolism, maybe I’m just trying to eat my feelings, but it’s not good. It leads to either spending money at the places around uni, usually on pure carbs and refined sugars because that’s how I roll, or I go home where the food is, and also my TV and the world’s cutest cat and grout that needs scrubbing. I need between meals food. I need muesli bars.

So I bookmarked this recipe a while ago, thinking it would make great between meals office food, and only got around to making them the other day. And great balls of fire, were they ever good. I’ve had five today. Five. I excuse my muesli bar scoffing because these are made with the usual low fat baking suspects - apple sauce, egg whites, honey - so they are, allegedly, healthier. Honestly, I’m a little uncomfortable posting such a healthy baked recipe here, because it feels a little ‘I sure do hate Mondays, chocolate chocolate chocolate, shopping for swimsuits is torture, I just want to get fit for Summer, help me remember my spirit, Oprah, am I right, ladies? I can’t feel anything, I can’t feel my hands.’

But they are good and tender and filling, and I plan on cutting sick with the various nuts and fruits and grains you can mix in. They also give me an excuse to cut into my plentiful frozen eggwhite supply, which is a good thing, because at the moment anyone going to my freezer would be forgiven for thinking I was hoarding frozen semen for some kind of underground fertility clinic.

Muesli bars
Adapted from Serious Eats. I got a dozen out of it.

A note on sugar: I used apple sauce that came sweetened, and in retrospect I should have dialled down the sugar a little. In future I might try leaving the sugar out altogether, but I think it might act as a humectant. I’m giving the smaller quantity of sugar here.

• 2 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
•  100g cranberries
• 80g slivered almonds
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 egg whites
• 1/4 cup apple sauce or pureed apple or similar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180. They used a standard sized glass lasagne dish, and so did I because the only square baking tin I have is the giant one I used that time I disappeared into a lamington-sized K-hole for a while. Either way, spray your pan of choice with oil, baking paper, leaving some overhang to lift the baked megabar out of the pan, and spray again. This is a sticky recipe.

Toast your nuts in a dry frypan, and your oats in batches, too, if you’d like a little extra something.  Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl, and wet ingredients in another. Using a spatula, work the wet and dry ingredients together. It may take some time. Dump into your prepared pan and pat out as evenly as you can. Bake 25-30 minutes, until evenly brown and darker at the edges. Use the paper overhang to lift the bar out on to a wire rack. Allow it to cool for five minutes, then cut into pieces. Store in a tin interleaved with baking paper so they don’t stick together.