Four ingredient apricot almond butter oat bars are the perfect healthy snack that will keep you satisfied and full until mealtime. Pair with a glass of milk for an even more balanced treat!
I am a dessert blogger. That comes as no surprise for anyone who looks around the blog for a minute or two. While there are a lot of perks to being a dessert blogger, there is one serious occupational hazard: my kitchen is always filled with desserts. At any given time, there are cakes, cookies, ice cream, and more. It is understandably difficult to make sure that my daughter has a healthy, balanced view on eating and isn’t scarfing down pounds of sugar and butter a day. I spend a lot of time making sure our meals and snacks are healthy and limit her sweets to maybe one a day if she is lucky. More often than not, she only gets a dessert once every two or three days.
Fortunately, my daughter loves healthy food. She is obsessed with milk. I mean truly obsessed. She will choose a glass of ice cold milk over a glass of juice 9 out of 10 times. When we go out, she loves to treat herself to chocolate milk. When I was younger, we would be served chocolate or strawberry milk in bags (do you remember those?) and it was loaded with sugar. Because of that, I would only limit chocolate milk to restaurant trips. Until I found TruMoo, that is. My daughter pointed out their commercial to me to let me know we could actually buy chocolate milk and bring it home. Yes, I told her chocolate milk could only be purchased and drunk at restaurants before that. So of course, I had to check them out. I was really happy to see TruMoo had no high fructose corn syrup. Instead they use real sugar – and less than I expected.
These days, I give her DairyPure brand milk in the morning with her breakfast since both DairyPure brand milk and TruMoo contain no artificial growth hormones and come from local dairy. I tend to give her TruMoo during her snacks or lunch. One of my favorite snacks is my four ingredient apricot almond butter oat bars. They are simple to make and really fill you up. I like to make a batch of them for us to eat throughout the week. Along with the milk, we also like to pair it with other nutritious food like yogurt and whole grain crackers.
- 1 cup dried apricots
- 1 cup almond butter
- ¾ cup coconut nectar, honey, or brown rice syrup
- 2 cups old fashioned oats
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x8 baking pan with parchment paper.
- Finely dice the apricots and set aside.
- Mix together the almond butter and sweetener (I used a mix of coconut nectar and honey) and heat on medium until a smooth consistency.
- Fold in the oats and apricots and mix until well combined.
- Pour into the baking pan and bake for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
This recipe sounds great! A handful of ingredients and prep time is a breeze. Yes, one of my taste testers is on an Ovaltine kick. He can’t get enough of it . Thanks for the recipe sharing and have a great day !