Muesli Cake Bars

These are tasty and filling, they have a low GI and a high protein and fibre content, and at a pinch could even be used as a replacement for breakfast.  The classic fruit-and-nut combinations (peanut and raisin, date and walnut and so on) are classics for a reason, so try one of those for your flavour theme, or just use whatever you’ve got and take pot luck – it’ll probably be fine.  My current batch contains chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries and chopped walnuts.

This is another of those “never quite the same” recipes that I bash together really quickly.  The results are therefore a bit variable.  I’ve come to realise over the years that an awful lot of my cooking is done like this; no exact quantities, casual substitution of one ingredient for another, and so on.  I’m winging it a lot of the time, even when I cook for guests.  It works, so I keep on doing it, and I suppose once you have the confidence to start playing it by ear like that, you can only get better at it.  Certainly worth giving it a whirl.

Because, honestly, cooking isn’t rocket science, or chemistry, or alchemy.  If your variations and substitutions are sensible and you keep to more-or-less the right proportions, you’ll almost certainly end up with something perfectly edible.  Be prepared to have a go and see what happens.

What do I mean by “sensible” in this context?  Come on, take a guess.  Make sure there’s enough of the raising agent in proportion to the dry mix when baking, know what different spices and herbs taste like and which ones can be swapped, don’t substitute smoked salmon for raisins or coffee for grated cheese unless you are prepared to eat something that may taste very peculiar indeed…   

Your quiche recipe specifies Emmenthal cheese but you don’t have any?  Yes, you can still make the quiche.  Use another cheese – almost any other with a strong flavour.  You’re about to make muffins and realise you only have one egg and no milk?  Try making a much stiffer mixture, spooning out on a greased and lined baking sheet and baking it as cookies instead.  They may not be tremendous but they’ll almost certainly be perfectly edible.

Anyway, back to the Muesli cake bars.

1 ½ cups porridge oats or gf oatmeal

1 ½ cups No 1 Baking mix or No 2 Baking mix

½ cup desiccated coconut

½ cup chopped dried fruit of one kind or another

½ cup chopped nuts

¼ cup mixed seeds such as pumpkin and sunflower

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 large over-ripe banana, mashed

2 tsp xylitol (optional – and I’d leave it out these days.  If the banana is really ripe that will give quite a lot of sweetness)

2 eggs

2 tblsp veg oil or 2 oz/50g melted butter or margarine

½ tsp vanilla essence

Milk to mix

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir together.  Mix the wet ingredients together and stir into the dry; add a little milk if necessary to get a soft but dense mixture.  It should be distinctly stiffer than an average cake mix, more like the mix for flapjacks (which these are a protein-rich cousin to).  Spread in a lined baking tin about 8” square and smooth down; mark into bars by cutting most of the way through.  Bake for 35-40 minutes at 150 degrees C in a fan oven, until golden on top.  Remove and cool, and break down the marked divisions.

Braised sweet potato or squash

It’s the season for them, so here’s a simple way of jazzing up cucurbits or other starchy veg.  The slower cooking and the addition of oil, garlic and herbs really enhances the flavour of these autumn staples.

Serves two to three as a side dish. 

1 medium butternut squash or a quarter of a large pumpkin, or 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced

2-3 cloves garlic, crushed or thinly sliced

Veg oil

A little stock

1 tsp mixed dried herbs or 1 tbsp chopped fresh mixed herbs

1 tbsp mixed seeds or 1 tbsp tahini as a topping

Very simple; pour a little oil into a large saucepan with a lid, heat gently and add the sliced sweet potato or squash, laying the pieces flat in layers.  Strew garlic and herbs between the layers and over the top, then pour on just enough stock to come round the edges, and simmer for 10-15 minutes or until the veg pieces are cooked and tender.  Keep an eye to make sure the pan doesn’t cook dry.  Serve hot with mixed seeds sprinkled over or a spoonful of tahini on top.

Braised veg with apple

We have an apple glut at the moment.  My landlady's garden is home to a tall apple tree and this year the crop is tremendous.  Every morning there are windfalls on the lawn, and we're both hunting for ways to use them up. 
A lot of chutney has been made, and blackberry and apple jam - I'll post some recipes for those shortly - and apple cake.  And tonight I invented this.
It's a kind of spin on the classic way of cooking red cabbage, but with different cruciferae (because this was what I had in the fridge) and more apple than usual.  This would serve two as a main veg dish alongside something like vege-bangers, pan-fried halloumi or grilled fish.

2-3 windfall eating apples, cored but not peeled, and chopped
1/2 a head of broccoli, chopped
1/4 of a white cabbage, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 pt vegetable stock
Paprika and black pepper

Cook the broccoli in the stock for 5 minutes, then add the chopped apples, cook for a couple more minutes and then add the cabbage, garlic and seasonings.  Stir frequently and cook until the apple has gone to a mush and the cabbage is cooked through.  Serve hot.

Low GI muesli

A visitor recently was kind enough to compliment my home-made muesli.  It isn’t something you expect anyone to notice, breakfast cereal.  So I appreciated the remark, and here's the recipe as a way of saying thank you.

Breakfast is probably my main carb meal most days.  Unlike most commercial mueslis which contain oats and wheat, this is based just on oats, and has no dried fruit either.  So it has a fairly low glycaemic index, although please note, it’s not nut-free and would only be gluten-free if made with gf oats.  It isn't exactly low-carb, though leaving out the dried fruit makes it much lower-carb than normal shop-bought muesli.  But what it is is a good filling breakfast, with slow-digested carbs and plenty of fibre, plus some healthy fats and and a small amount of protein from the nuts and seeds.

I make this with jumbo oats when I can get them.  They cost a bit more than ordinary porridge oats, but not a huge amount, and the texture is vastly better.  

You will need:

Porridge oats or jumbo oats or gluten-free oats

Oatbran (optional - I don’t think gf oatbran is widely available, though logically it must exist)

Flaked almonds

Broken or chopped brazil nuts

Hazelnuts, preferably roasted

Pumpkin seeds  }

Linseeds            } - (or a ready-made seed mixture, like H&Bs “Omega mix”)

Sunflower seeds}

Take a large glass or clear plastic storage jar with a tight-fitting lid (I use a two litre Kilner jar).  In it, put the ingredients in layers, starting with the seeds and nuts.  Exact measurements don’t matter, but I would aim to have thicker layers of seeds and thinner layers of nuts; maybe 1½  to 2cm of each of the seeds and 1cm of each of the nuts.  I like to vary it; this batch, for example, is a bit heavy on the sunflower seeds.

You want the seeds and nuts together to fill about two fifths of the jar.  Next, fill the jar almost to the top with oats and finish off with a couple of tablespoons of oatbran.  

Now empty the whole lot into a large bowl and stir together thoroughly.  

Spoon back into the same jar and you’re done. 

Serve with milk or plain yoghurt, and added fresh fruit if you want. 

Seedy lemon biscuits

These are inspired by the lemon and poppyseed muffins that some coffee shop chains sell, but using that flavour combination to make a crunchy no-added-sugar biscuit rather than a sticky sugary muffin.  They're nut-free, but not sesame-free; I still haven't completely cracked the "no allergens" puzzle.

100g/4oz/1 cup No 2 baking mix
1-2 tsp xylitol
2 tsp sesame seeds
2 tsp poppyseeds
Finely grated rind of 1 unwaxed lemon
25g/1oz butter or margarine
1 egg
1-2 tsp lemon juice

Stir the baking mix, xylitol, seeds and lemon rind together, then rub in the butter to get a mixture like fine breadcrumbs.  Add the egg and stir in; the mixture needs to be fairly stiff, but not so dry that it won't hold together; you want something of about the same density and texture as wholemeal pastry.  If need be, add a little lemon juice to help it to bind.  Gather together, then divide into 9 or 10 small chunks and roll each into a rough ball.  Flatten onto a non-stick or greased/lined baking tray and bake at 150 degrees C (fan) for about 15-20 minutes or until just starting to colour.

No 2 baking mix

Yes, I have developed another option!  This one is nut-free, so I now have the option of not poisoning my younger brother, which has to be a good thing, I think?!
I haven't yet tried this with a wide range of recipes, so can't vouch for how well it will do as an all-rounder.  It certainly worked fine with the biscuits I made last night, though.  As it lacks ground almonds, with their humectant qualities, I suspect things baked with this mixture may go dry rather quicker than those made with No 1 baking mix.  It also means this has a higher carb load than No 1 and less protein.  But to compensate for that, it's lower in fat.

100g/scant 4oz/1 cup linseed meal
90g/3oz/1 cup soya flour
125g/5oz/1 cup fine cornmeal

Mix together and store in an airtight jar.

Apricot, ginger and walnut buns

These were thrown together in a hurry, using my good friend the Muffin Method, which is why the ingredients are only in cups.  I'm really pleased with how well they turned out.  However I should mention that they're not as healthy as my usual cake recipes, because there's a small amount of real actual added sugar in them.  Shock horror.  I was using up a small amount of crystalised ginger, and even though I rinsed off the outer coating of sugar crystals, the crystalisation process itself has infused a lot of sugar into the ginger, and a quick rinse isn't going to get rid of that.  But by damn, crystalised ginger is sooo good! 

Not the best photo of food I've ever taken; the camera is more interested in my tea mug than the bun...

1 1/2 cups No 1 Baking Mix
1/4 cup broken walnut pieces
1/4 cup chopped soft dried apricots
1/4 cup chopped crystalised ginger (with the sugar rinsed off if you are trying to minimise the carb hit)
1 tsp xylitol
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ground ginger
2 eggs
1 tblsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
Mixed seeds (e.g. pumpkin, sunflower and sesame) for a topping, if you like

Seive the baking powder and spices into the baking mix, add the xylitol and the nuts and dried fruit and stir all together.  Add the eggs and oil and enough water to make a soft but firm consistency.  Spoon into greased bun tins or muffin cups - it made seven medium-sized ones for me - and sprinkle with mixed seeds if you like a crunchy topping.  Bake at 150 degrees C (fan) for 25 - 30 minutes.