RAMONA'S MA'S BREAKFAST BARS

I dedicate this recipe to my old work buddy Ramona and her ma! Ramona left our work recently to head off to Australia (lucky girl!) and before she left she gave me a jar of jam that her mother had made and sent to her from Germany. It was such a nice gift that I wanted to want to use it in something special and these breakfast bars seemed like the perfect time. By adding the jam to a mixture of oats, coconut, sunflower seeds, egg and cashew butter, you can create this fabulous breakfast treat.

In keeping with the "New Year, New Me" ethos there are a couple of ingredients that are healthier alternatives to the norm to make these bars as guilt free as possible. Cashew butter can be picked up from large supermarkets and health food stores and give these bars a rather fabulous nutty flavor. You can replace this with almond butter too if you wish.

The sunflower seeds have been added to ramp up the goodness factor and they also give the bars a bit of added crunch. They can be left out if you wish or you can replace them with another seed such as the flax seeds you may have left over from making my banana pancakes. Some chopped nuts would also make a welcome addition.

As for the jam, we don't all have a special jar of Ramona's Ma's strawberry jam but you can use your own homemade version or a shop bought jam will work too. Doesn't necessarily need to be strawberry either, mix up these bars by using another flavor of jam if that's is what you have in your cupboard. Just don't leave the jam out, it helps to bind the bars together when they cool as well as adding a little bit of sweetness without the need to add any additional sugar.

Coconut oil is a healthy eaters friend. I've used it here along with the dedicated coconut as they compliment each other but you can use 60g of unsalted butter instead if you wish. Just make sure it's soft so you can easily incorporate it into the breakfast bar mixture easily.

Your oats and eggs help alongside the jam to hold the bars together so leave them as they are. With that its time to get baking! You won't believe how delicious these bars turn out with the minimal amount of effort required to make them;

Ramona's Ma's Breakfast Bars

185g Cashew Butter

2 Tbsp Sunflower Seeds

160g Strawberry Jam

60g Coconut Oil

60g Desiccated Coconut

150g Porridge Oats

2 Whole Eggs

1.  Turn your oven straight on to 200 degrees (180 fan) and line a 22cm square deep sided baking tin with baking paper.
2. Then simply take all the ingredients, throw them into a large bowl and give everything a good mix until well combined. Tip the mixture into the lined baking tin and press it down to compact it and level it out making sure it gets into all the sides and corners.
3. Pop the tin in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until the surface begins to turn golden brown. Remove the tin from the oven and leave the mixture to cool and firm up.

Once the mixture is completely cool, carefully cut them into 25 equal sized bite sized squares. Be very gentle as they are quite crumbly and will fall apart if you just start hacking away at them like a crazy person. The little sweet nutty cubes are then ready to tuck into and are perfect served up with a big fat mug of tea or for grabbing on the go if your in a rush in the morning. They are so quick and simple to make you could whip up a big batch of these bad boys on a Sunday so you have them all ready for the week ahead. They are so good that that I'm sure Ramona's Ma would approve!