Sunshine Bars

It was brought to my attention recently that there is nothing to eat in the house. Whut? I started to get mad, but I decided to make Sunshine Bars instead. 

The original recipe came from Laurel's Kitchen, the ultimate source of 1970's vegetarian nutritional wisdom. It is full of whole wheat, tempeh-laden, yogurt-y goodness, and it was also one of the cookbooks my mom gave me when I left the house in 1996. She had a preview copy of the twentieth anniversary edition with a note from Laurel herself, and kindly gave it to me. 

The book warns against the evils of sugar, and rightly so, but there is still a small dessert section at the back with their recipe for Sunshine Bars. These are meant to be a homemade version of "health food bars", but they are much better. Depending on whether my kids go crazy for them or not I will make a double or even triple batch next time and freeze them. There is a lot of stirring and pouring for this one, so next time I'll also let my kids help. 

Substitute ingredients. As long as you keep the ratio of dry to wet the same, it should turn out fine. 

Ingredients:
1 cup boiling water
1 cup dried apricots

1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup melted coconut oil

1-1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup flax meal
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup raisins
2/3 cup almond flour

Directions:
1. Put the dried apricots in a small bowl and cover with the boiling water. Let them soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

2. Mix the maple syrup and oil together in another small bowl. 

3. Stir the dry ingredients (oats, flour, flax meal, cinnamon, and salt) together in a medium bowl. 

4. Strain the liquid from the apricots into the bowl with the maple syrup and oil, and then chop up the apricots. 

5. Add the apricots, raisins, and almond flour to the dry ingredients and stir. 

6. Add the wet ingredients and stir to combine. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

7. Grease a 9" by 13" inch baking dish and press the mixture into it. Bake the whole dish for about 30 minutes. Nothing tastes worse than burnt raisins, so I recommend setting a timer for this. 

8. When they are done, allow the dish to cool completely before cutting the bars. 

I wrapped mine individually in waxed paper for no particular reason except that it looked cute and reminded me of how my mom used to wrap my dad's lunch sandwiches back in the day. 

I'm not sure that making these saves any money, but at least you know exactly what you're putting in them. I also didn't calculate how much it cost to make these, but when I turned around and looked at my kitchen I remembered the real cost: clean-up.