These easy fruit and nut bars are full of tasty goodness. They are great for packed lunches, picnics and after-school snacks and go very well with a nice cup of tea.
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Homemade Fruit and Nut Bars
The beauty of making these little bars at home is that you can control exactly what goes into them.
There are no added ingredients with long scientific-sounding names, no preservatives and no refined sugars (if you leave off the jammy glaze).
All they contain are fresh fruit, dried fruit, seeds, nuts, oats, flour, apple juice and a dash of cinnamon.
They are the perfect thing to make with the first autumnal apples!
Make Them Your Way
This recipe is easy to adapt to your own tastes and requirements.
- Gluten-Free Fruit and Nut Bars These tasty little bars can easily be made using gluten-free flour and oats. Or replace the flour with ground almonds.
- Swap apple juice for orange juice, pineapple juice or blackcurrant juice for a different fruity flavour. I particularly like the combination of blackcurrant and apple.
- Leave out the coconut if you are not a fan. Replace it with some ground almonds.
- Try using nutmeg or mixed spice instead of cinnamon for festive fruit and nut bars!
- Make them refined sugar-free by leaving off the jelly jam glaze.
Tips and Tricks
Homemade fruit and nut bars are really easy to make, especially if you bear these tips in mind but do scroll on to the bottom of this post if you just want the recipe with full ingredients list and method!
- the cooked apple is the binding agent in this recipe so make sure you have cooked it to a puree.
- don’t chop your nuts too finely, you want some chunky texture here.
- press the mixture fairly firmly in the tin so that it holds together well when you cut it.
- don’t cut the cooked mixture into bars until it is completely cool or it may crumble.
More Easy Bars and Bakes
You might also like my easy recipes for:
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Easy Fruit and Nut Bars
Equipment
- 1 20cm/8 inch square cake tin
- Baking parchment
Ingredients
- 500 g dessert apples peeled, cored and chopped
- 75 ml unsweetened apple juice
- 225 g mixed dried fruit such as sultanas, raisins, pitted dates, dried apricots
- 125 g chopped nuts
- 75 g rolled oats
- 75 g plain flour
- 25 g desiccated coconut
- 25 g pumpkin seeds
- 25 g sunflower seeds
- 2 tbsp rapeseed oil
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tbsp apricot conserve (optional) to glaze
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180C/350F
- Grease and line a 20cm/8 inch square baking tin with baking parchment. Leave enough parchment at the sides to use it to pull the bake out of the tin once cooked.
- In a small saucepan cook the peeled, chopped apples and the apple juice for about 10 minutes or until soft.
- Put all the other ingredients except the apricot conserve into a large mixing bowl.
- Add the cooked apple and mix well to combine.
- Press the mixture into the prepared tin and press down well with the back of a spoon.
- Bake in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes until turning brown.
- Heat the apricot conserve in a small saucepan until liquid and brush over the top of the bake to glaze.
- Leave to cool in the tin.
- Use the baking parchment to lift the bake out of tin and onto a board.
- Slice into ten bars using a sharp knife.
