Making your breakfast bars or energy bars are a terrific way to cut costs and reduce the amount of waste the excess packaging creates. Without the wrappers in the trash, this is a cost effective and waste-free to get the iron and fibre you need without the cost of buying commercial gluten-free bars.
You can also personalize your breakfast bars to reflect your own preferences: If you hate raisins but want the iron, you can replace it with any other dried fruit. The base ingredients are found in the article called How To Make Your Own Energy Bars: The only difference lies in replacing the oats with a gluten free option.
What's in Gluten-Free Breakfast Bars or Energy Bars?
Energy bars are defined by the FDA as being any food substance that contains calories; in other words, there is no difference between a breakfast bar and an energy bar. All granola/energy bars/breakfast bars are broken into four basic ingredients: Grain, dried fruit, seeds and binding. The binding is a combination of honey, canola margarine or extra sugar, which holds all the ingredients together.
Try mixing and matching the following ingredients, and replace the grain in the original breakfast bar recipe published yesterday, with the same measures of the any of the below grains.
Grain:
- Puffed buckwheat
- Buckwheat flakes
- Puffed corn, or try air popped corn for an interesting crunch
- Puffed rice
- Soy, either as puffed soy, or as Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP)
- Amaranth flakes
- Quinoa flakes, or cooked and cooled quinoa
- Millet flakes
Since these cereals are already processed, do not follow the toasting option in the original recipe. They will be baked in the oven with the seeds and fruit, so roasting them further would eliminate any nutrients, to say nothing of flavour.
How To Make Gluten-Free Breakfast/Energy Bars
Follow the ingredients and directions for making your own Energy Bars; replace the oats with a gluten free option listed in this article’s Grain suggestions. Keep in mind that you can always add or remove any of the ingredients.
If you’re not a fan of any of the dried fruits in the original recipe, replacing the fruit in yesterday’s article with any of the following suggestions:
Dried Fruit Replacements
- Sultana raisins
- Dried cherries
- Dried dates
- Dried figs
- Dried guava
- Dried papaya
- Dried pineapple
- Dried apple
- Dried pear
- Dried peach
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Place the honey, fruit sugar, margarine, vanilla, nutritional yeast and salt in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir, until butter is melted and sugar is completely dissolved.
- Reduce heat to low, and add your choice of grains and nuts, plus the fruit, tossing until everything is well coated.
- Reduce oven heat to 300 degrees. Transfer mixture into a greased 9x9 inch square baking dish, pushing everything down until well packed. Bake 25 to 30 minutes.
- Remove, cool it completely, then cut into squares with a sharp knife.
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