Recipe: Healthy Back-to-School Breakfast Bars

Tomorrow marks the first day of school for Queen's undergrad and grad students! As many of you know, I am starting my PhD this year and I have, so far, made one goal - to make this first day of a four year adventure my last official first day of school for a very, very long time.... maybe ever. Now I aim to live life with the goal of learning something new every day and I have no idea where my career might go but, hopefully, this first day marks the beginning of the last degree I will obtain.

This, for me, brings a great deal of excitement. I feel energized! I will be a powerfully efficient and incredibly skilled artist of a student. 20 years of education has prepared me for this moment, the pinnacle of my career as a student. Ok maybe now I am just exaggerating....

 Here's strategy #1 to being an effective student... have a good plan for breakfasts. Nothing prepares you better for a long day of mental and physical exertion than a well-balanced, healthy and (most importantly) quick breakfast. Enjoy these bars with a berry protein shake brought to you by the Bullet Express (my next favourite kitchen appliance).

Ingredients 

3 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup of uncooked quinoa 

1/2 cup of unsalted sunflower seeds 

1/2 cup honey 

1 ripe banana, mashed

3 egg whites 

1/8 cup of orange juice 

~1/4 cup of additives of choice such as dried cranberries, other dried fruit, chocolate chips etc. 

Directions 

1. Set the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper 
2. In a medium sized bowl, mix together oats, quinoa, and seeds. 
3. In the stand mixer bowl combine mashed banana and honey. Secure the bowl and the wire whisk to the stand mixer. Turn on to Speed 10 for 2 minutes in order to mash up the banana even more. Once mixture is smooth, reduce speed to Speed 4 and add egg whites and orange juice. Mix until just combined. 
4. Turn the stand mixer off and switch from the wire whisk to the flat whisk. Add dry ingredients to the stand mixer bowl and mix contents together for 3 minutes at Speed 5. Add in additives of choice and mix until just combined. 
5. If you wish to make a few different types of bars, for example I made cranberry-only, chocolate chip-only and cranberry-chocolate chip varieties, divide the batter into separate bowls before adding the additives of choice. 
6. Using about 2 Tbsp of dough at a time, roll between palms to form a cylinder. Place on cookie sheet and press with fingers to flatten into a bar. 
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the bottoms are a golden brown
8. Rap up each bar individually with plastic wrap for a quick grab-on-the-go breakfast. Bars can be frozen or kept at room temperature. 

Recipe in Photos:

Dry Ingredients 

After mixing together wet ingredients - notice banana chunks are nowhere to be seen

'The dough' 

To make two different flavours, I divided the dough in half and added cranberries to one, chocolate chips to the other (see below)

After using up about 1/2 of this portion I added cranberries to make a third kind - cranberry-chocolate chip. 

Lesson of the Day: Turns out the cranberry-chocolate chip combo is my favourite. Next time I will make a whole batch of this combo flavour rather than dividing it up. While diversity is nice, cranberry-chocolate is delicious.

Arranged on a parchment lined pan. Notice bars are approximately 4 inches long and are pressed down to form more of a bar than a cylinder

The golden brown bottom to aim for

All wrapped up! The perfect breakfast to take on the go.

What I Learned: 

• Making your own bars is quick, efficient and healthy. In less than 30 minutes I made 24 bars that are about the same size of a Nutrigrain bar but are packed with clean, simple ingredients.
• Up to 1 cup of quinoa can be used. I suggest 1/2 a cup of quinoa after using one whole cup my first batch and realizing the bars were a little heavy on the grain. I had a 'comment' from my biggest critic saying the quinoa "doesn't get degraded by the GI" ....but hey, its good for your colon. 

This recipe receives three whisks because I used the stand mixer quite extensively while experimenting with adding the various ingredients. The mix was heavy - it would have been tiring to mix this stuff by hand.