It has proved a lovely, lovely thing to cook some of my childhood favourites for Mr. R&R, and I’ve also (with not a little trepidation) cooked some of his remembered dishes from growing up (see my italian meatloaf, or polpettone). I suppose it’s a way of cementing our two histories together, of saying that yes, we may have had separate lives beforehand, but look how well we go together – we even like each other’s nursery foods.
Today’s recipe is one straight out of my eighties childhood – of leaky lunchboxes, of coming home starving after school and devouring with a glass of milk, of Delia’s Complete Cookery Course floury on the sideboard. It’s telling that my dad asked for this as a birthday treat earlier this year. I think mum and I refused on the grounds of too-retro-to-be-true, but as proof that the old date and oat slice still does the trick, I handed these around on the beach today to a crew of hungry kiters and they were much appreciated.
Obviously they’re a moveable feast – change up the flour, use walnuts instead of seeds, replace the honey with golden syrup or use some olive oil instead of butter. The main factor will be how high your crumble-tolerance level is – if you don’t want crumbs you’ll need to err on the fattier side to make the oats and flour stick together better. However, I prefer using less butter and gathering up the inevitable crumbs left in the biscuit tin to sprinkle over yoghurt as an impromptu granola.
Date and oat slice
Makes about 15 slices, depending naturally on how big you like them.
Ingredients
- 225g stoned and chopped dates
- 100 ml water
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 200g rolled oats
- 100g wholemeal flour
- 50g mixed seeds, e.g. sunflower, sesame, linseed
- 120g unsalted butter
- 2 tbsps honey
- 50g light brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 170˚C and butter a 20cm / 8inch square tin (ideally – I used a 9 inch round foil cake pan which makes cutting even slices a little more geometrically challenging).
- Heat the chopped dates and water in a small saucepan over a medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the dates are mushing together into a paste. Help it along with a wooden spoon, then scrape out into a bowl, stir in the vanilla extract, and set aside.
- In the same saucepan, melt the butter, sugar and honey together until combined.
- Now measure the dry ingredients – oats, flour, seeds, baking powder and salt – into a medium mixing bowl and stir in the buttery mixture well so that the dry ingredients are well coated.
- Spoon half this oaty base into the tin, pressing and spreading it out evenly. Now drop spoonfuls of the dates all over this flat surface and press down with your fingers to form a middle layer – it does stick to the oats so space out your spoonfuls so you can cover the whole tin. Top with the rest of the oats and press down well to get a nice flat top and a fairly compact slice.
- Bake for 45 minutes until the top gets nicely golden. Remove from oven, let it cool for around 20 minutes in the tin, then cut into slices.
Preparation time: 20 minute(s)
Cooking time: 45 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 12
Meal type: snack
Culinary tradition: English
3 Comments on "Date and oat slice: a kiteboarder-approved, homemade energy bar"
Erm – you did say it was date and OAT slice – the oats seem to have skipped out of the ingredient list. Could you give the quantity please?
Brain melt…thanks for pointing this out! Duly updated: you need 200g rolled oats for this quantity.
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