Whole-Grain Raspberry Crumb Bars
I have written before about my family’s breakfast struggles. With a two-year-old who still wakes up at night and a 5-year-old who wakes up starving at 7:00 every morning, breakfast is often a trying time and it’s tempting to always resort to bowls of honey nut Cheerios. While we do the Cheerio thing often enough, I do sometimes want a more filling, appealing alternative. I’ve tried out lots of granola bar recipes over the years because I love how portable and easy they are and my kids like them too. I’ve looked at different homemade fruit bars, as well but the recipes I’ve seen are usually so full of refined sugar that I’m hesitant to serve them as breakfast. I decided to expirement with bars made from whole grains and fresh fruit instead of white flour and jam. I recently bought a huge container of beautiful raspberries so I decided to start with those as the base. However, I think this would work well with almost any kind of berries.
Ingredients
- 2 cups old-fashioned oats
- 1/4 cup golden flax meal
- 1 1/2 cups whole-wheat flour
- 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup melted butter
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups fresh raspberries
- 1 cup sugar
- Preheat oven to 350º and line an 8 x 8 inch baking pan with parchment paper.
- Make Raspberry Filling:
- In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the raspberries and sugar. Crush the raspberries a bit with a wooden spoon to release some of their juice. Set aside while you prepare the oat crumble.
- In a large mixing bowl, stir together the oats, flax meal, flour, sugar, salt and baking soda. In a separate bowl or measuring cup, whisk together the butter, oil and vanilla. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until it forms a crumbly mixture.
- Press 2/3 of the crumb mixture into the bottom of the lined baking pan. Pour raspberry mixture over the crumbs and spread carefully with a spatula. Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture on top of the raspberries, gently pressing it in to adhere.
- Bake in preheated oven until oat crumble is golden brown and begins to firm up, about 45 minutes. Cool bars for at least 2 hours before removing from the pan and cutting into squares.