Strawberry Oatmeal Squares

A few weeks back, I made a large batch of strawberry jam. Yesterday, I decided to turn the leftover jam into something else. After hunting for a suitable recipe, I came across a simple one  for raspberry oatmeal bars which made use of ingredients I already had. Judging from the reviews of the original recipe, it seemed to be a pretty good one.  Since I needed to use up my homemade strawberry jam, that's what I used but any kind of jam would work here.

Ingredients:

(For 16 squares)

• scant ½  cup brown sugar
• scant 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup instant oats
• ¼  teaspoon baking soda
• A pinch of  salt
• 6 Tbsp butter, melted
•  ¾   cup  jam

Method:

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line an 8x8-inch baking dish with foil and grease well.

Mix the flour, oats, brown sugar, salt and baking soda together in a bowl. Pour in the melted butter and mix it well into the other ingredients with your hand.

Dump about half of the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Spread to form an even layer and pat down firmly.  Spread the jam over this layer. (Make sure you don't spread it too close to the sides of the pan- I made the mistake of spreading my jam a little too close to the edges and had some burnt jam along the edges, stuck to the foil.) Top with the remaining mixture and press down lightly.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool and cut into squares.  

Orange-Oat Bars

I made these bars a while back when I was going through a phase- one that I usually go through at the beginning of every year, where I try to watch what I eat and be good. Unfortunately for me, this is a phase that does not last very long! I was looking for some healthy eats then and I came across these bars on Sunita’s blog. Her orange and date bars seemed to be just what I was looking for. I had a huge canister of oats and some prunes that had to be used up and her recipe looked perfect.

I did not make too many changes to the original recipe except that I substituted the dates in the original recipe with prunes and also added a handful of walnuts.

Ingredients:
(For about 8 bars)
2 cups + 2 Tbsp uncooked oats (I used old-fashioned oats)
1 orange (mine was the seedless kind), peeled and pureed in the blender
Zest of an orange
8-10 prunes, chopped
5 Tbsp honey
¼ c oil
7 Tbsp yogurt
½ tsp cinnamon powder
½ cup chopped walnuts
A pinch of salt
Powdered sugar for dusting the tops of the bars

Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8x8-inch baking pan/dish with foil and grease with oil/butter.

Mix all the ingredients (listed above) together and place in the baking dish. Spread it around as evenly as possible.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. Cool for a bit and then cut into bars. Dust the bars with powdered sugar. I had to do this since the bars were not sweet at all in spite of the honey and the naturally sweet orange juice, and it was too late to incorporate sugar! If I make these again, I would definitely add some sugar and maybe toast the oats and nuts in the oven for a few minutes for a better flavor.

These bars do make for a great breakfast/snack on the go and are healthy and filling.