What to Make: Vegan Jam-Filled Oat Bars

Oat Bars Filled with Jam

Home-baked bars are so easy to make and you’ll be very grateful to find them in your cupboard whenever you crave sweets or need a takeaway breakfast or healthy snack. Kids love to get these in their lunchboxes and grandmas love to dip them into warm soy milk after their afternoon nap (well, at least lactose-intolerant grandmas like mine!). Use any syrup you have available; agave, rice, maple, apple, date – they all work well in this recipe.

Makes 12

Ingredients
300g rolled oats
130g unbleached spelt flour
? tsp bourbon vanilla powder
? tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
? tsp salt
170g brown rice syrup (see introduction above)
130g coconut or sunflower oil
90g naturally sweetened fruit jam

Equipment
23x30cm baking pan, greased

Method
Preheat the oven to 180?C/gas mark 4.

Mix the oats, flour, vanilla powder, cinnamon, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl, then add the syrup and oil and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

Spoon half the dough into the prepared baking pan and press down evenly into the pan. Spread the fruit preserve over the dough with a wet spatula, then spoon over the remaining dough, smoothing the top with a spatula.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Remove from the baking pan and allow to cool on a wire rack.

Cut into squares to serve. Refrigerated, they’ll keep for 2 weeks in an airtight container but it’s more likely they’ll be gone in 2 days!

VARIATION: You could also try filling these with hazelnut or carob spread.

Extracted from The Vegan Baker by Dunja Gulin (Ryland Peters & Small, approx €17). Photography by Clare Winfield.