Caitriona Redmond

Thrifty Tasty Bites

21 Oct

Refined Sugar Free Granola Bars

Refined Sugar-Free Granola Bars

Refined Sugar-Free Granola Bars

Let’s face it. We’ve all had school mornings where we’ve slept it in/you’ve spent too long wrestling with a uniform/you just don’t know what happened to the time & you need to grab something healthy as you go out the door. I love these granola bars, I’ve designed them to use natural sweeteners rather than sugar and they are so easy to put together. The seeds add protein, the oats are low GI and the dried fruit adds more fibre again.

Truth be told my boys would eat these bars day and night if I let them.

Refined Sugar Free Granola Bars

  • Servings: 9
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

Ingredients (Makes 9 bars)

  • 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
  • 2 tablespoons agave syrup
  • 2 tablespoons runny honey
  • 200g porridge oats
  • 50g mixed seeds (sunflower and pumpkin in my picture)
  • 50g dried fruit (sultanas in this picture)

Method

Preheat your (fan) oven to 200 degrees Celcius.

Put all the wet ingredients in a large bowl and stir into a runny syrup, then mix in the oats, seeds and fruit until they are well coated.

Press the mixture into a non-stick brownie tin (20cm x 20cm). There’s no need to grease or line the tin as the sunflower oil will help stop the bars from sticking.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Once cooked, remove the tin from the oven and using a knife which has been dipped in warm water, trace out the shape of the bars.

Leave the tin to cool completely before turning it upside down on a plate and lightly tapping to loosen the granola bars. They should fall out easily.

4 thoughts on “Refined Sugar Free Granola Bars”

  1. Charlie @ The Kitchen Shed -
    Yummy!! These look amazing! We have been on the hunt for a healthier granola bar recipe for a while, my husband loves the ones you can buy from supermarket bakerys so I shall definitely have to try these out on him.
    Reply
  2. Ciara -
    Hi Caitriona - really enjoy your website (first time commenter!). I've been looking at a lot of refined sugar free recipes recently and the prevalence of agave in them got me wondering about how "good" a refined sugar substitute it is as I'm starting to look more towards cutting out sugar in as many of its man-made forms as possible, not just the obvious ones. Anyway, long story short - I don't think agave is as good for you as we've been lead to believe - it has a very high fructose content - comparable to corn syrup. Using all honey (low fructose) might be a better option for these bars. Sugar is such a minefield with so many different opinions on all the different forms..and I'm open to correction on this :)
    Reply
    • Caitriona Redmond -
      Hi Ciara. Thanks for that. Considering that Agave isn't produced in Ireland, and that honey can be acquired far easier with far less food miles I'd agree honey would be better. Absolutely try the recipe with all honey, it works just as well!
      Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: