Hello, high energy fruit and nut bars

I took a detour into Baked because there was no way around it.  Had to be done.  Couldn't not.  I saw this recipe on my first flick through and it went straight to the top of my list (Ha!  Oh dear.  Since I made them, I've been wondering why the book won't close properly.  While most people would do something practical about that, such as look a bit closer and maybe check for something stuck between the pages, I went with looking at it and saying to myself 'Huh. That's not closing properly' and then squishing it down.  I just opened it to check the actual name on the recipe and it turns out there's nearly enough flour, oats and sunflower seeds loaded into the spine to bake another batch.  Oops).

I have a great loathing for muesli and nut bars in general.  Not because they're muesli or nut bars, but because it's so hard to find them not covered in chocolate or yoghurt, or super, super loaded with sugar.  Yuck.

So, obviously, with all the happiness of figs, apricots, seeds and nuts, honey (and a few other bits and bobs) ... morning tea was born.

By the time I realised the photo is as fuzzy as it is, I'd already drunk the tea and eaten half the bar, so sorry about that.  I could've re-taken a photo at that stage, but I don't think it would've looked as classy.  Ish.  Kind of.  You get the general idea though.  And surely you're used to my sorry excuses for photos by now anyway?

These taste amazing - I'm developing a love of figs since starting my Global Baker project, so I especially love the figgy bits in these.  I also used New Zealand dried apricots which are much sharper than the Turkish and by far my preference for everything.  Although, I did something the other day that I think I might have to try again with Turkish next time ...... Ah!  The brioche.  I wondered about the sharp (vs sweet) apricot taste in the brioche.  But I'll definitely make that again so I'll try Turkish next time for a comparison.

I did screw up a fairly crucial step in making these (cringe!) which meant a bit of a scramble to save them, but I pretty much managed to get them back.  The only effect is that they are much sweeter than I think they would otherwise have been, so I'm looking forward to a do-over.  The dry ingredients are held together with a boiled honey/sugar/butter combo (pretty much like rice bubble biscuits actually) - except I had little ginger helping me this time so my sugar ended up in the dry ingredients as well, meaning that my boiled mixture didn't have enough liquid (didn't make enough liquid?) to hold the aforementioned dry ingredients and I had to quickly make more (just enough to hold it, since I was pouring extra liquid onto dry sugar. More cringing!) and ... it was a bit of a tense time overnight while I waited to make sure it held.  Much breath-holding.  Thankfully, I didn't need to cry and we have a full bicky tin.  Win!  And, to be honest, if they'd fallen completely to bits I probably would've just bagged the bits and eaten it as a scroggin mix of sorts anyway.

I may stay with Baked for my next tin-filler because I also saw a recipe for traditional hot cross buns.  My chocolate hot cross buns from Global Baker were a disaster (my fault - dough related) so they're on the do-over list.  And since I really do love traditional hot cross buns, and both recipes are by Dean so I don't think it's cheating.  Not really.  I'm still counting it as part of the project.