My daughter adores apple cereal bars. In fact, she would live off apple cereal bars and orange juice if I let her. Fruit bars or cereal bars are found alongside muesli bars in the supermarket and they are basically an oven baked pastry tube filled with a pureed fruit. Since my daughter likes to have a fruit cereal bar in her lunchbox every day it was time to try making my own and this Oven Baked Fruit Bars Recipe was born!
I started out making an apple filling by peeling and slicing 2 granny smith apples and cooking them with a teaspoon of caster sugar in a small saucepan over a medium heat until they were soft. I added a drop of vanilla extract at the end for added flavour and then let the apple puree cool for a few minutes. Homemade apple puree is easy to make and great to cook with. It’s even good in Chocolate Brownies!
If you don’t want to make your own filling just could use a homemade fruit jam. You can pick up yummy, homemade jams at farmer’s markets and school fetes. A word of warning about the pastry – it can be crumbly. If your pastry is too crumbly to roll out it is probably too dry so try adding a few drops of water and kneading it gently.
Save RecipeIngredients
- 130g butter
- 30g raw sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 ½ cups wholemeal self raising flour
- 1 ½ cups plain flour
- Pre-prepared fruit puree or jam for filling
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 Celsius. Line 2 baking trays with non stick baking paper.
- Combine the sugar and butter in a large bowl or food processor.
- Add the egg and mix well.
- Add both flours, mix until a thick dough forms.
- Wrap the pastry in plastic wrap and place in the fridge for at least 20 minutes.
- Once the pastry is chilled, roll it out onto a floured bench top to about 3 or 4mm thick.
- Use a knife to cut the pastry into rectangles 8cm x 10cm.
- Place a teaspoon full of fruit filling down one long side of the pastry rectangle. Leave a little border so the pastry will stick together.
- Carefully fold the rectangle in half to cover up the filling. Gently press down the edges of the pastry rectangle to seal in the filling.
- Transfer the bar to a baking tray. Repeat with the remaining pastry and filling.
- Bake the bars in the oven for 15 minutes or until golden. Allow the bars to cool on a cooling rack.
Maree Mortimer is mum to 5 year old twin girls who love to cook. After working as a secondary Home Economics teacher and a teacher librarian in primary and secondary schools, she took time off to raise her daughters. Maree believes that as food and cooking are essential for a healthy life, parents need to be encouraged to cook with their children as much as possible. You'll often find her family spending time together in the kitchen - re-connecting over food and trying out new recipes and ingredients.
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