Apricot and Raisin Bars - Bars Week #1

Recipe tried out in May 2011



Happy New Year! Err, a day late! Lyanne will start kindergarden this year and her first day will be on the 5th. I'm sure dear readers who are parents will be busy at this time of the year, especially those with new schoolers.

I'll start the ball rolling with Bars Week


This year is a rushing year. School starts and we have to start preparing for Chinese New Year as CNY falls end of this month. Not much time left. So, if you don't have time to bake cookies (that takes up a lot of time to form each one, make bars. Bars are easy to make. Press them all in a pan and bake, then cut. Easy peasy.

If you're into grain bars and cringe when it's always always always too sweet, try this.

The only sweetener here are from the fruits. In fact, I find it slightly under sweetened, LOL. I mean, maybe I'm expecting it to be sweeter, but it taste not as sweet as I expected it to be. But it's this level of sweetness that will allow you to take piece after piece after piece without feeling guilty.

I recieved this cookbook as a Christmas present many years ago, and have never tried anything from it as I am not really interested in any Fat Free cooking. But since I have a lot of dried apricots that been sitting my fridge for ages, say, more than a year, there's not much of excuse not to try this out.

I think this will be my first and last try out from this book.

Not because I felt the bars were undersweetened, but the temperature and pan size it reccomended. The baking temperature was too high and the pan size was way too huge. It asked for 200C(fan), but I baked mine at 170C(fan) and still the bars almost got burnt. So far the oven has been consistent in temperature and time with recipes from reputable authors. It's not my oven's fault, definately. So I'd reccomend it to be even lower, at 150C(fan). It called for 10X12 pan, but since I didn't have such a pan, and I looked at the mixture, it wasn't really that much. I pressed everything into a 8 inch square and yet I could get a 1cm thick bar. I can't imagine getting a half cm thick bar with the reccomended pan size. Can you imagine how many other things were inaccurate? I dare not try any other recipe from this book. This book shall collect dust from this day forward.

Apricot Raisin Bar

Recipe source: The Virtually Fat-Free Cookbook by Christine McFadden

280gm dried apricots
115gm quick cooking oats
1 tbsp butter, softened (original recipe calls for oil)
150gm black raisins

Method:
rewritten for better explaination
1. Soak dried apricots in water overnight. The water should be enough to cover the fruits.
2. Put apricots into a saucepan and some of the soaking liquid. Bring to a boil, cover with lid and lower to a simmer for 5 minutes or until apricots are soft enough to be mashed.
3. Drain apricots and mash with a fork. You can use a food processor, but it's a waste when everything gets stuck here and there.
4. Mix everything together.
5. Preheat oven to 150(fan)/170C. Prepare a 8 inch shallow square pan, line it with overlapping sides.
6. Press the mixture into the pan.
7. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden.
8. Remove from oven and let it cool down in pan.
9. Chill for 2 hours or until firm and cut into bars.

10. Store air tight or in the fridge (in tropical weather)