Not to beat a dead nut bar or anything (recipe)

Made my brother’s nut bars with my friend Lisa yesterday and our combo turned out awesome (yes, awesome, MACLEANS’s).  So here it is.  For the detailed directions go to my brother’s recipe HERE.  Don’t freak out, it just looks complicated and scientific.  Actually it’s just a bunch of stirring and putting a tray into the oven– but he has great tips for substituting ingredients and doing your own thing

Our combo was:

SEEDS:

1/2 cup sunflower
1/2 cup ground flax

NUTS

1 cup chopped pecan
1 cup chopped walnut
1 cup chopped macadamia nut
1 cup cashews

Fruit

1 cup dried pineapple
1 cup dried blueberry
1 cup dried cherry

Oats

1 cup rolled oat
1 cup granola

BINDING  AGENT

3/4 cup honey
1/2 cup brown sugar

1 ounce butter
1 ounce pumpkin seed butter

1 tsp salt
1 tsp real vanilla extract (scraping in a vanilla bean might be awesome.)

LES INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Line a cookie tray with parchment and set aside (for final baking of bars).

Meanwhile, chop up your nuts if need be.  Chop up fruit and have it ready (only if you want smaller chunks–we did chop the pineapple but not the cherries. If you even consider chopping the blueberries you are the nut bar in this recipe.)

Put the oatmeal/granola and nuts/seeds on a couple trays (just divide any which way) and warm in the oven for 20 minutes.  Check to make sure nothing burns.  I turned down the heat to 300 F half-way through.

Melt the honey, brown sugar, butter and pumpkin seed butter plus the vanilla and salt in a large pot (must be able to hold all the ingredients).

Add the fruit and stir to coat.  Add the rest of the dry stuff (oats, nuts, seeds) still warm.  Mix to coat (it will look like there is not enough binding agent but it works perfectly.)  Pour the whole mixture onto a tray lined with parchment.

Flatten it and it should make a nice thick layer.   Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes.  We checked it at 12 but it was still a bit “gooey”.  15 minutes did the trick.

Cool and slice.   Feel awesome.