red quinoa banana oat bars

Sometimes you come across a recipe online that is so basic, so memorable, that you make a mental note of it and try to recreate it without needing to look at the source online, because it’s incredibly easy and basic.

And after making it a few times, you’ve made some minor changes and tweaks, and it feels like your recipe.

That’s how I feel about this recipe. This is mine. But it’s really a lot of other people’s recipe for oat bars, or granola bars, too.

One thing I love about this is the banana flavor, without the banana texture and mouthfeel! Plus it’s something you can make when you need to use up some ripe bananas but just don’t feel like having banana bread again.

Another thing is that it is relatively healthy but seems to satisfy my sweet tooth. At least most of the time. I toasted and cooled the red quinoa before using, and I think that helped bring out the nuttiness of it.

You might be wondering why not just prepare and eat a bowl of oatmeal? I say this is less moist and more fun! Plus, sometimes I just don’t want to start a long hot summer day eating a hot bowl of oatmeal.

So here it is! Enjoy!

Red Quinoa Banana Oat Bars

ingredients

2 ripe bananas, mashed

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt

about 1/8 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg (optional)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional)

2 cups rolled oats

1 cup cooked quinoa (optional: toasted in oven at 350 for 10 minutes and cooled before using)

2 teaspoons granulated sugar (optional)

method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 8 x 8 square pan or line in parchment paper. (I like to use a slightly larger pan and get them a little thinner because they are spread out more.)

Mash bananas in a bowl and add the oil and salt and mix very well. Add the nutmeg and cinnamon, if using.

Fold in the oats and quinoa thoroughly.

Spread evenly in pan and level top with back of a spoon or small offset spatula. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of sugar, if using, over the top, emphasizing the edges to get them nicely browned and crisp.

Bake for 30 minutes. Cool and cut into rectangles or squares.

 

3 responses to “red quinoa banana oat bars”

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: