Carrot Cake Oat Bars: spicy carrot cake flavour in a fraction of the time

Carrot Cake Oat Bars have all the spicy flavour and moist richness of carrot cake. But are made in a fraction of the time. Studded with sultanas, nuts and coconut, with the scent of orange and spice, Carrot Cake Oat Bars are so easy.

Eat as a moreish chewy snack with a cup of tea or put in lunch boxes. You can even serve them warm as a dessert with cream or ice cream.

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INSPIRED BY MY FIRST COOKERY BOOKS

I’ve been cooking for over thirty years and in that time have gathered a substantial cookbook collection. But, these days, being able to access just about any recipe you can think of via the internet, I don’t buy quite as many as I used to.

Nevertheless, I do find myself returning again and again to some of the dog-eared cookery books on my shelves. Some of which have been with me for almost all of my culinary life.

I think the first recipe book I bought, when I was around sixteen, was a second-hand copy of Entertaining with Cranks from the founders of the now defunct vegetarian restaurant chain. Not that I did any entertaining you understand. But, during those last few months of living with my parents, I’d become vegetarian. As I was expected to cook my own main meal, I needed some inspiration.

I guess that seems strange today, when many parents apparently cook a whole series of different meals and at different times to suit the foibles of individual family members. But this was less the case back in the late 1980s. Certainly in our house anyway. Vegetarianism was a minority interest then, let alone veganism which I adopted a little later.

Although I’m now an omnivore, I still eat a lot of vegetarian and vegan food. But what I turn to the Cranks books for are reliable recipes for scones, biscuits and the like and, most often, the one for Coconut Oat Bars.

FROM COCONUT OAT BARS TO CARROT CAKE OAT BARS

Coconut is one of my favourite flavours and Cranks’ Coconut Oat Bars are great for when you want something sweet but don’t want to go to the trouble of making a cake. They’re a sort of chewy, more risen and more interesting flapjack.

The basic recipe is incredibly easy. Oats, sultanas, self-raising flour, sugar and coconut are stirred into melted butter and honey, pressed into a tin and baked. Over the years I’ve slightly altered the Cranks recipe, adding chopped apricots and cinnamon. I always add more coconut than the recipe calls for too.

But, fancying carrot cake the other day and having neither the time nor inclination to bake one, I got the idea to try and adapt the quick and easy Coconut Oat Bars so that they had the distinctive, spicy and rich flavour of the well-loved cake.

My favourite carrot cake recipe is one which I tore from a magazine in (I can’t quite believe this) 1995. It sits in one of my many folders full of recipe clippings. I think it may be a Delia Smith recipe and the elements I took from that for my Carrot Cake Oat Bars were mixed spice, orange zest, carrots of course, and pecan nuts. The Cranks recipe already included sultanas and coconut, so it sounded like my idea of amalgamating the two should work. And it did.

The resulting Carrot Cake Oat Bars were sweet, fruity and buttery but with the warming spices and orangey tang of carrot cake, the flavour of coconut running through it. The texture was good and chewy from the dried fruit and oats. The baking had also given the shreds of sweet carrot a candied edge.

OPTIONAL DRIZZLE

Instead of the traditional carrot cake topping based on cream cheese, I went for a simple orange drizzle. I was out of icing sugar, so just whizzed some golden caster sugar into a powder and mixed in orange zest and enough orange juice to give a thinnish pouring consistency.

After sprinkling a little more coconut over the top, the Carrot Cake Oat Bars were ready to go. And they did go fast! If you can resist eating them all, the bars will keep for several days in a sealed container or you could freeze them without the orange drizzle.

FOR SNACKING, PACKED LUNCHES OR PUDDINGS

Carrot Cake Oat Bars are a lovely chewy snack with a cup of tea and are great for putting in lunch boxes.

We even enjoyed some warmed and served as a quick pudding. I pinged them in the microwave for a few seconds and served a couple each with homemade ice cream. The ice cream in the picture below is coconut with chocolate strands and it went perfectly with the coconut flavour of the warm bars. Even better, I thinned down some of the orange icing with more orange juice and drizzled that over the ice cream too.

I hope you’ll try making my simple Carrot Cake Cake Oat Bars. Close your eyes and you’d be forgiven for thinking you were eating a cake you’d spent ages over, not any easy, sweet treat ready in little more than half an hour.

5 from 2 votes

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Carrot Cake Oat Bars

Easy oat bars with the spicy flavour of carrot cake, made in a fraction of the time.

Course Dessert, Snack, Cake

Cuisine Vegetarian

Keyword oats, flapjacks

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 20 minutes

Total Time 35 minutes

Servings 12 bars or 9 squares

Author Moorlands Eater

Ingredients

• 180 g butter plus extra for greasing baking tin
• 1 tbsp honey
• 100 g rolled or porridge oats
• 100 g sultanas
• 2 medium carrots, peeled shredded with a julienne peeler or grated
• 60 g self raising flour
• 60 g desiccated coconut
• 50 g sugar
• 50 g pecan nuts roughly chopped
• 3 tsp mixed spice or replace some/all with cinnamon
• 1 orange (zest only)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan /Gas 4.

   Butter or line a baking tin measuring 20cm square or similar.

2. Gently melt the butter and honey together in a large saucepan.
   

3. Take the saucepan off the heat and stir in all of the remaining ingredients until well combined.
   

4. Press into the base of the baking tin and bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly risen and browned.
   

5. Cut into squares or bars while still hot, wriggling the knife a little to separate. Leave to cool.
   

6. Carefully remove from the tin when cold. Store in an airtight container or freeze.
   

For the orange drizzle (optional)

1. Add the zest of an orange to 1 tbsp of icing sugar. Add enough juice from the orange to make a thin, pourable drizzle. Drizzle over the Carrot Cake Oat Bars when they are completely cold.