Oat and Milk Snack Cake

I tried it with pecans on the left and strawberries on the right

(My mom taught me the tinfoil trick when trying to make pans different sizes)

You can ask almost anyone who knows me, I can go a bit overboard when it comes to health bars. I love them and, if I had enough money to buy bars that cost $3 each, my whole house would be filled with them. It's a good thing I don't have that much money, since I might never get around to eating real food.

Due to the high cost of nutrition bars, I have started poking around for recipes for them. I found this recipe the other day and tweaked it to my liking (using whole wheat flour, milk and lemon instead of buttermilk, and tossing in some strawberries that were about to go bad). The use of milk and lemon is mostly because I too cheap to go and buy actual buttermilk.

I brought these to my Friday night church group and got lots of compliments on them. For the pictures on this post, I made a half batch of strawberry and a half batch of pecan. Both turned out well. When summer is here, I think I will make this into something of a quick bread and add blackberries, mmmm.

Whole Wheat, Oat and Milk Snack "Cake"

Adapted from Cooking Light

3/4 T lemon juice in a 3/4 cup measuring glass

Enough milk to fill the 3/4 cup with lemon juice in it

1/4 steel-cut oats

1/4 cup oat flour (rolled or quick oats ground to a powder in a blender or food processor)

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 t baking powder

1/4 t baking soda

1/4 t salt

3/4 t cinnamon

1/4 c brown sugar

2 T butter

1/2 t vanilla

1 large egg

Optional:

1/4 cup chopped pecans to sprinkle on top

or

1/3 cup sliced strawberries (heck, any kind of berry) folded into batter

Combine buttermilk and oats; cover and refrigerate 8 hours.

Preheat oven to 375°.

Lightly spoon flours into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt, stirring with a whisk.

Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and egg; beat until well blended. Stir in oat mixture; beat until well blended. Add flour mixture, beating just until moist. If using, fold berries into batter.

Spoon batter into a 8x8-inch baking pan coated with cooking spray. If using, sprinkle pecans on top of batter. Bake at 375° for 30 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan on a wire rack. Cut into squares. Garnish with powdered sugar, if desired.

You can easily double this recipe for a 9x13 pan with the same baking times, just fyi.

Strawberry version on the left, pecan version on the right.

Of course, you can just make it plain if you are allergic to nuts or don't have strawberries and it will still taste delicious.