Sunday, November 15, 2009

Wholesome Banana Chocolate Breakfast Bars



I made this recipe a while back and for some reason, never got around to posting about it. Clotilde Dusoulier’s Wholesome Banana Chocolate Breakfast Bars were very good, not to mention very healthy. If your bananas aren’t very ripe, or if you are serving these to people with a sweet tooth, I would advise adding a spoonful of brown sugar. If you are sticking to a gluten-free diet, make sure that the oats are certified gluten-free, of course. If you want a nut-free version, you can use flour (gluten-free or not) instead of the ground almonds and olive or coconut oil instead of the almond butter.

2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup ground almonds
1/3 cup unsweetened coconut
½ tsp fine salt
120 g dark chocolate chips
4 very ripe bananas
½ tsp vanilla
¼ cup whole almond butter

Preheat the oven to 350 °F and grease an 8-inch square baking dish.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the oats, ground almonds, coconut and salt. Set aside.




In another medium mixing bowl, combine the bananas, vanilla and almond butter; mash thoroughly with a potato masher. Add the oats mixture and mix well. Fold in the chocolate gently.




Pour into the prepared baking dish, level the surface and slip in the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, until the top is set and golden-brown. Let cool completely before slicing into bars (slice only what you need and cover the rest with foil; keep at room temperature).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This recipe looks very tempting (as long as I can find almonds that don't say "may contain traces of nuts"). I'm wondering about your choice of substitutes. I would imagine the flour may be a bit less flavourful and more... sticky than the ground almonds. Perhaps a combination of pastry flour and almond extract may enhance the flavour. As for the oil instead of almond butter, wouldn't it be completely loose then? When I go out to Loblaws tonight I'm going to see if I can find any Rob-friendly ground almonds/almond butter. I think I saw some once.
As a side note, we're going to the US this weekend. Since I saw that you used your Scharrfenberger, did you want us to get you some more (or anything else)? If so, email me.

Amélie said...

Actually, coconut oil at room temperature is quite thick (more so than olive oil), so I would recommend that as a substitute for the almond butter, especially since coconut isn't actually a nut.
As for the ground almonds, I imagine that perhaps a gluten-free flour (like rice flour?) might be better than wheat flour in this case, but I don't yet have much experience in that field, so unfortunately I can't really recommend one. Good idea on adding the almond extract, though!
And thanks for the offer to bring back chocolate, but we are still working our way through the 2.5 kg of Callebaut, so we'll be good for a while! :)