SUPER SEED BARS

Becoming a mum has meant I’ve had to up my snack game! Not only because I am breastfeeding so have higher nutritional requirements but because time is of the essence and if I don’t have time to sit down and have a full meal then I need a good, nutritious snack to get me by until I can. Something I can take on the run with me is also a win!

I’m not a huge one for sweet snacks so I wanted these bars to be more savoury in flavour but the good part is you can tweak the sweetener as you wish if you like yours more on the sweeter side.

As a snack, these are incredibly nutritious - packed with fibre, protein and healthy fats. I’ve kept them nut free but of course feel free to sub in nuts for some of the seeds and for you real nut lovers out there you can even use peanut or another nut butter in replace of tahini.

Although you can mix the ingredients up, pumpkin seeds a great source of zinc, sesame seeds (and hence tahini) provide us with calcium and sunflower seeds are an excellent source of Vitamin E and selenium. Oats and whole spelt flour, along with all the seeds are fabulous for fibre and the seeds and eggs add some protein too. Overall there is 10+ different plant foods in this recipe so it will be sure to keep your gut microbes very happy!

Makes approx 10 bars

Ingredients

2 cups oats
1 cup seeds (I used a mix of pumpkin, sunflower and sesame)
1/2 cup whole spelt flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 eggs, lightly whisked
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup maple syrup (optional - tweak as you prefer))
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons tahini
1/3 cup chopped dried figs and pitted medjool dates
pinch of salt

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180⁰C. Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl. Line a baking dish and place the mixture in, pressing it down with the back of a spoon and smoothing it out on top. Bake for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned on top, and then remove from the oven, setting aside to cool. Slice into bars and store in an airtight container.