Time to bake! My recipe for carrot cake oatmeal bars
Time to bake! My recipe for carrot cake oatmeal bars
Right now, I am obsessed with baking, specifically baking high-protein, semi-low-calorie foods to compliment my recently discovered love for fitness. I made carrot cake oatmeal bars over the weekend and I wanted to share my recipe with you in this article, so here you go:
Total baking time: 5 hours (max.)
What do you need?
The ingredients for carrot cake oatmeal bars are:
1) 2 carrots (roughly chopped)
2) 200g rolled oats
3) 60g walnut halves
4) 3/4 pitted Medjool dates
6) 2 bananas (roughly chopped)
7) 2 tablespoons chia seeds
8) 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
9) ½ teaspoon nutmeg
10) 1/8 teaspoon cloves
11) ¼ teaspoon sea salt
12) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
13) 120ml milk
14) 25g shredded coconut
The ingredients for the frosting are:
1) 125g cream cheese
2) 50g unsalted butter
3) 60g powdered sugar
4) 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
The materials you will need:
1) Food processor
2) Mixer
3) An oven
4) (Squared) baking dish for in the oven
5) 3/4 bowls (three small, one big)
6) A table- and a teaspoon
7) Cutting board
8) Scale
9) Measuring cup
How I like to make them:
Step 0): wash your hands (!) and gather all your ingredients and materials!
Step 1): peel the carrots and cut them into rough pieces. Put them in a bowl and wash them (something I like to do). Then put them into a food processor. Pulse several times, until crumbs form. Once this is finished, you should have about 1 cup. You can place the carrots back into the bowl.
Rinse and dry the food processor.
Step 2): put 160g of the rolled oats in the food processor. Grind into a coarse flour. Next, add the walnuts and process until ground.
Step 3): Cut up the two bananas roughly and put them in a bowl. Make sure you measure all the left-over ingredients and throw them in one bowl. Then carefully add the chopped bananas, dates, chia, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, sea salt, vanilla, and milk to the food processor. Process until mostly smooth, some texture is okay. And don´t worry, it can take a while as the substance is pretty thick. You can use two tablespoons of coconut oil to make it a bit more smooth, but I think those are unnecessary calories ????.
Step 4): Add and pulse the remaining 40g of oats, carrots, and the shredded coconut in the food processor.
The preparation for your base is now finished!
Step 5): Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a baking dish with parchment paper (try to make sure there’s an overhang so you can lift the bar out at the end). You might do this earlier, but my oven does this pretty quickly.
Step 6): Scoop the dough out of the food processor and into the prepared baking dish. Using wet hands or a spatula, spread the dough out in an even layer and smooth the top as much as you can.
Step 7): put the dish with the dough in the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes (do check every 10 minutes, because it depends on your oven).
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While the dough is getting reading in the oven, let’s make the frosting! For the frosting, we have unsalted butter, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and of course, cream cheese.
Step 1): In a large bowl using a mixer, beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth and creamy. This usually takes about 3-5 minutes!
Step 2): Add the powdered sugar, salt, and vanilla. Beat on a low speed for about 30-40 seconds, then switch to high speed and beat for 2-3 minutes. If you want the frosting to be a little thicker, you can add a bit more sugar.
And tadaaa! The frosting is finished. Now, all we have to do is wait for the oven to beep.
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Step 8): Once the cake is finished in the oven, you can take the baking dish out and let the cake cool for about 20 minutes.
Step 9): Once the 20 minutes are over, you can add the frosting onto the top and put it in the refrigerator. Leave it in for 2/3 hours.
Step 10): After 2/3 hours, take the cake with the frosting out of the refrigerator and sprinkle some extra left-over shredded carrot on top. Feel free to add anything else you like.
Step 11): Cut the cake into bars and voila! Your self-made carrot cake oatmeal bars are done! ???? Enjoy :P
Fun side note: If you cut the cake into 12 bars, each bar contains +/- 250 calories.
