#guestpost week featuring Natalie from Hello Cuppies

I’m delighted to have Natalie guest posting today and joining in with the #guestpost week on my blog.

Natalie is a happy, and in her own words “late-twenties *cough* mid-30’s *cough*” 🙂  baker, blogger, veggie and Mum. Natalie established Hello Cuppies in 2012 and what started out as a baking and recipe blog has evolved into a lifestyle and personal blog sharing insights on the life of a Northern girl living down south.  Natalie has been baking professionally since 2011 and picked up the caking bug after baking some cupcakes for a friend’s daughter.  She is completely self taught and has developed her skills by experimenting, reading and testing recipes whilst creating lots of new flavours and combinations along the way.  Natalie really dislikes over the top recipes and techniques so will try to keep things simple, but still as effective as possible.

Here’s her great post, over to you Natalie…

Healthy Homemade Granola Bars

Mainy from myrealfairy  was kind enough to have me on-board with writing a family friendly recipe to feature as a guest post on her blog. I’d also recently received a few emails and spotted some comments on my Instagram photos with regards to creating a recipe for something healthy, and for something with a little less sugar so I thought this was the ideal opportunity to share a healthy(ier) recipe.

I’m so used to baking cakes and biscuit type desserts that actually coming up with something reasonably healthy was difficult. I struggled, not gonna lie! I scratched my head, did a little bit of googling for inspiration but couldn’t really find anything that was healthier but still scrummy.  It then dawned on me that I needed to stick with what I know – fruit and natural flavours – and to set myself a bigger challenge – NO ADDED SUGAR – none… nada…zilch!

 

So here you have it, these protein packed granola bars are healthy and yummy! They store well, last well and taste even better a day or so after they’ve been baked. Oh, and they are gluten free too.  Actually, thinking about it, if you could find a honey substitute (maple syrup maybe?) they could easily be vegan – challenge for ya there!

INGREDIENTS

This recipe yields 16 to 20 granola bars and shouldn’t take you longer than 15/20 minutes to pull together.

• 65g pecan pieces & 65g almonds (loosely chopped or blitzed in a food processor)
• 45g pumpkin seeds
• 85g dried cranberries
• 130g of quick-cook oats (I used gluten free)
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon of ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• 100g of smooth peanut butter (Whole Earths is my favourite)
• 175g of runny honey
• 5 tsp of vanilla extract

METHOD

• Line a 8-inch tin with parchment paper (you could use a bigger tin if you didn’t want them so chunky)
• Pour the oats into a large mixing bowl and then add both nuts, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, cinnamon, ginger, salt and orange zest. Mix to combine.
• In a smaller bowl, mix together the peanut butter, honey and vanilla extract until all combined and smooth.
• Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix them together until the two are evenly combined and no dry oats remain. This will be tough – if it’s too easy and too smooth add a few more oats.
• Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and use your spoon to press down and make sure the mixture is even and packed together. I used my hands too as it was easier to tell if it was all compact.
• Cover with cling-film and chill for 1 hour in the fridge.
• Bake bars at 200 degrees (fan) for 30 minutes (conversions are here if you need them)
• When cool lift out of the tin using the parchment paper edges and slice in to bar type shapes.

 

If you make these do let me know!

 

Thanks to Natalie for these yummy treats and for being part of our #guestpost series. You can read and find out more about Natalie and her work through her media sites below:-

Blog: http://hellocuppies.com

Orders: www.cuppiesncream.co.uk

Twitter: here

Facebook: here

 

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