Here’s my recipe for today for Light and Tasty: crumbly vegan shortcrust bars with hazelnuts, raisins, and coconut. And I’ll confess quietly: they are super delicious!!!

Today, the Team suggested coming up with bars and snack recipes, a topic that initially… let’s say, caught us off guard. Yes yes. 😄
The very first reaction from everyone when reading that bars was: what if we end up making all the same bar recipes?? In that initial approach to the proposed theme, we all had the instinctive idea that a bar-type snack, or a pocket-sized snack to carry in your pocket or in your kids’ backpack, was a bit unimaginative to develop into eight different recipes (because there are eight of us in the Team 😄).

But no way they would all be the same! My friends, the Light and Tasty Team is a hotbed of imaginative ideas!, as well as good ones.
Take a look at the recipe titles! Today’s proposals for your, and our, tasty snacks are all different and just begging to be tried.
And I might be the least imaginative one. 😄
Because as usual, I prepared the recipe at the last minute! And as always happens when I am rushed with a recipe to make on the fly, I relied on the number one rule of my super-home baking art: if you don’t know exactly what to do… meanwhile, prepare a shortcrust, then we’ll see! 😃

And so I did this time as well, I started preparing a shortcrust pastry, then went on to make decisions on the fly:
first I decided on a vegan shortcrust, to make the recipe as Light as possible (which in this case means egg and butter-free),
then I added coconut and hazelnuts, because the recipe absolutely has to be Tasty, 😊
and finally, I decided to add some raisins, because I still had some homemade raisins, a grape drying experiment I did a while ago, and I was waiting to place them in the right recipe. And since I never throw anything away (a must-have rule), in the end, these shortcrust bars also became a kind of pantry-clearing recipe. What more could I want from a recipe?

Here they are, my crumbly shortcrust bars. What do you think?
Yes, they might look more like cookies than bars 😃 but as a snack, they are perfect because they are super crunchy, and they create a certain dependence, crunch here and crunch there, and they are easily transportable in a bag or wrapped two by two. And my kids devoured them!!!

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More snack ideas? Check out these suggestions: 👇

Difficulty: Very Easy
Cost: Cheap
Rest time: 30 Minutes
Preparation time: 30 Minutes
Portions: 18 pieces
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Healthy
Seasonality: All Seasons

107.85 Kcal

calories per serving

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Energy 107.85 (Kcal)
Carbohydrates 15.46 (g) of which sugars 5.42 (g)
Proteins 1.95 (g)
Fat 4.73 (g) of which saturated 1.15 (g)of which unsaturated 3.33 (g)
Fibers 0.75 (g)
Sodium 6.44 (mg)

Indicative values for a portion of 24 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA^* and FoodData Central^** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.

^* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ^** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

Ingredients

2 cups cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cups shredded coconut
1/4 cup cups brown sugar
1/4 cup cups corn oil
1/3 cup cups water
2 tsp tsp dried oranges
1/4 cup cups toasted hazelnuts
1/4 cup cups raisins

Tools

Cookie cutters

Preparation

First, soak the raisins to rehydrate them (I simply put them in water, but you can also use a liquor or juice).
Then start preparing the vegan shortcrust pastry:
Place flour and coconut in a bowl, creating a well in the center.
Pour the oil, water, sugar, and chopped dried orange into the well in the flour.
Instead of dried orange (see how to dry oranges HERE), you can use candied peels (such as THESE) or simply grated zest.
Stir until the sugar dissolves, then gradually incorporate the flour.
Knead with your hands to roughly combine all the ingredients.
Chop the hazelnuts with a knife, drain the raisins, and add everything to the shortcrust crumbs.
Briefly work with your hands.
In this case, it’s not necessary to achieve the classic dough ball, just work the mixture so that it remains in crumbs.
Finally, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill the crumbs in the fridge for at least half an hour.
After resting in the fridge, proceed to shape the bars. I used a rectangular cutter, the same one I used when I made coffee bars.
Not exactly by choice but because it’s the only rectangular cutter I have!, but it’s obvious you can use whatever cutters you like.
Or you can spread the whole mixture onto a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper) and then cut it into pieces with a knife before baking.
In short, use the method you prefer 😉 the important thing is that the crumbly mixture is well compacted, with the fingers or with the back of a spoon. The mixture must be well-pressed to ensure the hazelnuts and raisins adhere well, preventing the bars from crumbling after baking.
These two photos should be quite explanatory: the previous photo shows the insertion of the shortcrust crumbs (with this cutter of mine I used about 1 oz, but they can be made thicker), and the following photo shows the result after the crumbs have been pressed.
Bake the bars in the oven at 320°F for about 30 minutes.
I preferred a baking temperature that wasn’t too high, but since it’s shortcrust pastry, you can apply your usual methods for baking cookies.
Tips and Precautions:
A couple of tips that I feel I should share regarding the raisins. As clearly seen from the previous photo, some of the raisins got a little burnt. This happened, in my opinion, for two reasons: one, some of the raisins I used were not well rehydrated, the raisins that were soaked longer did not have this problem; two, I wanted to leave the raisins visible for aesthetic reasons, but next time I will cover each raisin with a shortcrust crumb and I’m sure there will be no burning. 🙂 (Update: now that the recipe is finally online, I can reveal that the raisins used in this recipe are homemade, dried by me. 😊 Here they are, try it yourself, it’s easy to dry them! –> Homemade Raisins).
Another tip: the absence of leavening agents in the dough helps achieve the crunchiness of these shortcrust bars, but it’s useful to extend the baking time a few minutes – contrary to the classic rule of traditional shortcrust baking – because well-cooked bars are also well-crunchy.
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Mary: Snack Bars with Oats and Dried Fruits
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