fruity oaty bars!

i couple days ago, i made 'fruity oaty bars' from the beloved 'vegan cookies invade your cookie jar.' i'd been wanting to make them for a while, but had a little setback in that these are uber-healthy things which require ingredients that i didn't have and/or never heard of. as it was, i still couldn't find two of them, but one does get by.

this dry mix contains things like oats, spelt flour, ground flax seeds, and wheat bran (was supposed to be wheat germ - but the store was out).

the wet mix began with fresh orange juice:

and, naturally, i needed some extra for myself, because fresh oj is nice. p.s. naval oranges are NOT the right kind for juicing. note to self.

the wet mixture contains things like brown rice syrup (purchased for the pecan bars from last month) and pure maple syrup that was supposed to be barley malt syrup, which i am convinced does not exist.

either way - no added sugar and no fake sweeteners here, which is quite nice. instead, we have mix-ins. everyone loves mix-ins. here, they were: sesame seeds, green pumpkin seeds, cranberries, and a cup of mixed, dried fruit. i tried for organic and no-sugar added wherever possible.

because, if one is going to employ such ingredients as spelt flour and brown rice syrup, one might as well go the whole hog. which is a weird expression, and i don't really know what it means.

here is a close up out of the oven, in the middle of the 'cooling for at least 45 minutes' stage.

everything was fine until i began to cut it up - then all heck broke loose. HECK! everything fell apart. here is one of the prettiest-shaped chunks:

and here is the pile of little chunks/crumbs. however, there is a reason that these crumbs are placed on some foil, and not in the trash. this is because they were too tasty to waste. this, despite the fact that being seen scooping and eating crumbs from leftover foil is quite undignified.