Oatmeal Bars

Here’s how I make sweet and chewy oatmeal bars.

(I pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees)

Ingredients: Flour, Oil, Oatmeal, Sugar, Salt, Molasses, Soda and some pureed ginger.

The ginger is optional, and you could add any number of nutmeg, cinnamon, and so on, to taste.

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly in a bowl.

First I drop the oatmeal in the bowl. Use any kind of oatmeal. This is not the quick-cook or “instant” variety; the flakes are thick and coarse.

I load the fine ingredients into and through a metal sieve.

Here the flour is making its way into the bowl.

A sieve helps to mix in the smaller amounts of dry ingredients.

Here comes the sugar.

You can see that some of the flour and sugar has made its way through the sieve.

The ½ teaspoon of salt will be dropped onto the mound in the sieve.

As will the ½ teaspoon of soda.

All the fine dry ingredients are now shaken through the sieve.

Look Ma! No Lumps!

Here all the dry ingredients have been thoroughly mixed before I add the wet ingredients.

Here comes a teaspoon of pureed ginger , put down over 18 months ago, still good to use!

I put in just under a half-cup of oil. Last time I did a full-to-the-brim half-cup.

That’s not an apple-core floating in the cup; it is the reflection from the fluorescent light under my kitchen sink cupboards.

Likewise, this time, just under a half-cup of molasses.

It joins the pureed ginger and the oil.

I mixed everything thoroughly and felt that although the mixture was crumbly and damp, it could use a half of a half-cup of water. I rather think now I hadn’t need to add it.

My reflection also makes me wonder if, apples being cheap right now, I couldn’t add some chopped or pureed apple.

Here we are, all mixed up and somewhere to go.

Adding the water has made the mixture appear dark. I suspect the extra water absorbs light, or at least, traps it long enough to be reflected and absorbed by the ingredients.

I have fitted a sheet of aluminium foil to the size and shape of a glass tray.

Here I have poured the mixture into one end of the sheet.

I was curious; would the mixture spread out as it warmed up, and fill the entire tray?

No it wouldn’t!

Here’s what came out of the oven after 20 minutes.

Yum!

I had to drive to Lindsay and back; when I returned the cooked cake had cooled enough for me to cut it into slices and store it in a plastic container.

I’ll eat it later.

But unlike my pureed ginger, it’s not likely to last 18 months here!

Saturday, December 03, 2011

Just to prove these weren't a fluke:

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