Dear oatmeal,
No tea, no shade, but Lauren Toyota wants us all to rethink your predictable format...in a delicious and creative way, of course.
The best-selling author and food personality recently released her second cookbook, Hot For Food All Day, and it is brimming with plant-based recipes that will get you excited about breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night eats...you get the point.
"I don’t want to knock oatmeal–it’s filling and healthy–but I’m not the biggest fan of mushy porridge for breakfast. I make it ’cause it’s quick, but with a little planning you can bake that oatmeal with peanut butter into a bar dolloped with your fave jam...now we’re talking," says Toyota in the introduction to the recipe in her cookbook. "These are just the right amount of soft and chewy and make another great grab ’n’ go brekky."
Peanut butter and jam oat bars
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Line an 8 by 8-inch baking pan with parchment paper by cutting two strips both 8 inches wide and crossing them in the pan to cre- ate clean edges. Trim the excess overhang, if needed.
Combine the flax meal and water and set aside to thicken, 5 to 10 minutes.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the rolled oats, all-purpose flour, coconut sugar, tapioca flour, baking powder, and sea salt.
In a large liquid measuring cup or another mixing bowl, combine the peanut butter, nondairy milk, and vanilla with the thickened flax meal mixture until smooth. Add this to the mixing bowl of dry ingredients and fold together until fully combined.
Spread the mixture evenly into the baking pan all the way to the edges. Take a dough cutter or knife and lightly score or mark every 2 inches across in each direction, creating the indented lines for
16 square bars. Do not cut through the pan of oat bars at this stage.
Dollop about 1⁄2 teaspoon of jam on top of each square and gently press it with the back of the teaspoon into the top of each bar.
Bake for 25 minutes, until the edges are golden brown and the bars look soft and raised. Cool in the baking pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes before lifting out by the parchment paper edges and placing onto the wire rack. Slice bars where you made the scores.
Cool completely before storing leftovers in the fridge.
You can warm slightly in the microwave for 30 seconds before eating. Consume within 7 days.
Lauren Toyota's hot tip
If you don’t require these bars to be gluten-free, then you can use rolled oats that aren’t specifically labelled as such, and you can substitute 1¼ cups of all-purpose flour for the gluten-free and tapioca flours.
- Yield:
- 16 oat bars
- Prep Time:
- 15 minutes
- Cook Time:
- 25 minutes
