Sunday, September 08, 2013

No Bake Cherry Chocolate Chip Crumble Bars and No Bake Cashew Butter Oatmeal Cookies—Secret Recipe Club

Gluten Free Fruit (Cherry) Chocolate Crumble Bars--Sept. SRC

Love, love, love these healthy, gluten free, no sugar, No Bake Cherry Chocolate Chip Crumble Bars I made for this month’s Secret Recipe Club.  These were easy to make, required no baking (hence the name ;)) and are tasty as can be, especially if you like cherries and chocolate.  Great combo!

I came up with this recipe after seeing (and taking most of the inspiration from) the No Bake Fruit Crumble Bars on my Secret Recipe Club blog, The Saturday Evening Pot, this blog is written by The Chef and The Lucky Wife—they have Two Well-Fed Kids they love cooking for.  My bars were made with gluten free oats and they just have unsweetened dried cherries, walnuts and a couple other essentials.  Then they are sandwiched with some homemade cherry jam I made that is delicious!  For kicks and because I just can’t seem to leave chocolate out of anything, I added a mere two tablespoons of Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips.  Mmmm!

No Bake Cherry Crumble Bars 9-2-13

No Bake Cherry Chocolate Chip Crumble Bars (Gluten Free, Refined Sugar Free), by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from The Saturday Evening Pot

2 cups oats (I used gluten free)

1 cup walnuts

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsweetened dried cherries

2 tablespoons organic coconut oil

2 tablespoons raw honey

2 tablespoons Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips (or any brand you’d like)

1/3 cup (or more) homemade cherry jam**see recipe below

Line an 8 inch square pan with nonstick foil.  Combine the oats, walnuts and salt in a food processor and pulse until crumbly.  Add the cherries and blend until they are well combined with the oat mixture and are small bits of dried cherry.  Add the coconut oil and honey and pulse to combine and mixture just starts to clump together.  Add the chocolate chips and pulse again a few times.  Sprinkle half the crumbly mixture evenly in the bottom of the square pan.  Spread the jam over the crumb layer.  Sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture evenly over the jam and press it down gently.  Cover the pan and refrigerator for an hour.  Remove bars from pan using the overhanging foil.  Cut into squares on a cutting board.  Keep bars in the refrigerator until serving.

**Homemade All Natural Cherry Jam

2 cups cherries, pitted (I used some that I had in the freezer)

2 tablespoons raw honey

1/4 teaspoon almond extract

Put all ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse until pureed.  Leave it as chunky as you’d like.  Put the mixture in a small saucepan and boil for 15-20 minutes until thickened.  Cool.  Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  Use within 2 weeks. 

9-2-13

If I only had more dried cherries right now……..

Before I made the crumble bars, I also made the No Bake Cashew Butter Oatmeal Cookies.  Again, I used gluten free oats and unrefined sugar.  I also used coconut oil instead of butter.  The cashew butter I used was homemade.  These are great.  I put most of them in the freezer to share with my mom when my parents come here next week, since she doesn’t eat chocolate and loves cashews, she will like them.  My son, Parker really liked them and I thought they were great.

Ingredients for No Bake Cashew Butter Oatmeal Cookies

I made the brown sugar with some organic natural pure cane sugar and added about 1/2 teaspoon of molasses to it and mixed it together until it was brown sugar.  Love doing this.  I’m still trying not to use too much pure cane sugar even though it is pretty unrefined, but these had quite a bit.  We must “splurge” sometimes, right and I still even consider these bars pretty healthy compared to many other treats.

No Bake Cashew Butter Oatmeal Cookies

No Bake Cashew Butter Oatmeal Cookies (Gluten Free), by Katrina, Baking and Boys!, adapted from The Saturday Evening Pot

3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar (I made it homemade with 3 tablespoons organic pure cane sugar and 1/2 teaspoon molasses mixed)

1/2 cup organic natural pure cane sugar

2 tablespoons organic coconut oil

1/4 cup almond milk (or any milk you’d like)

1/3 cup cashew butter

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1  3/4 cups rolled oats (gluten free)

1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

pinch of salt

In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the brown sugar, cane sugar, coconut oil, milk and cashew butter.  Whisk together and let come to a boil.  Boil for one minute.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla, salt, oats and coconut.  Stir with a wooden spoon until well combined.  Drop dough with a cookie scoop onto waxed paper lined baking sheet or plate.  Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes until set.  Store in refrigerator until serving and any left over. 

No Bake Cashew Butter Oatmeal Cookies 2

I always enjoy looking through my monthly assigned blogs for the Secret Recipe Club each month and The Saturday Evening Pot was no exception.  Lots of great recipes!

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18 comments:

Camilla M. Mann said...

I am always looking for gluten-free recipes. I can't wait to try this. Thanks for sharing it with the SRC.

Lisa said...

I've got some cashew butter in my fridge right now so it looks like your bars are next up on my list of things I must make. I may even drizzle them with chocolate.

The Lucky Wife said...

With all of our blog tech issues, I'm so glad you were able to find 2 recipes to try... wow! Glad you loved them so much also.

I will have to try the cherry/chocolate combo with the bars too. I love that adaptation. And we also have started using coconut oil some in place of butter. Sounds like we have some things in common with foods at least!

Trisha said...

Wow, you made 2 wonderful picks Katrina. They look great. It looks like you are already getting into the swing of Holiday Baking. Will you be participating in this years 12 Weeks of Christmas Treats?

Anonymous said...

Oh my goodness, so many good things in one place! And it's no bake?? Love this!

Jersey Girl Cooks said...

The cherry bars look so moist and good. I just saw your chess cake and love it!

Unknown said...

Wow, these look and sound amazing. I'm a big fan of coconut oil and anything with honey!

Valerie said...

I think I would love both of those recipes, but my kids have nut allergies so they couldn't eat them. Maybe I'll have to make some and keep all to myself, to enjoy little by little.

Sarah said...

those cherry bars look great! love that jam recipe too :)

vanillasugarblog said...

I am SO loving all this GF baking you are doing!
It's such a creative field isn't it?
I just made some delish brownies you need to see.
I used GF Oreos'!!

Lesa @ Edesias Notebook said...

Great recipes, Katrina! I'm totally drooling over the chocolate cherry bars. Gotta make those soon!

Anonymous said...

They look absolutely perfect !
yum

Anonymous said...

Do you think these would be good using dried apricots & apricot jam instead of cherries? They look really good, but I don't have cheeries :-(
Love your new healthier recipes!

Katrina said...

Anonymous--I think apricots would work great and would be delicious! Maybe chop them before adding them to the food processor with the nuts since they are bigger. Mmm, now I want to do that. ;)

Anonymous said...

Thank you! I'm hoping to try it this week with the apricots & I'll let you know how it turns out :-)

Anonymous said...

I made the bars with apricots. They taste good, but I was impatient and used my Vitamix instead of hauling out the never used food processor - I think the Vitamix is too powerful for this & the nuts & oats got a little over blended. I think the texture of yours looks better. Perhaps I'll be more patient next time :-)

vouchers for restaurants said...

Looks interesting, I'll try this recipe soon :)

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