Here is my secret recipe to home made muesli bars. It’s pretty complex, but is guaranteed to increase threshold power by roughly 67.3%. But really they do give you a good amount of energy and the best thing they have over standard sports bars is that you make them! You can put everything you want to eat and nothing you don’t.
Ingredients:
– Rolled oats
– Mixed nuts / trail mix
– Pumpkin kernels
– Shredded coconut
– Jam
– Honey
These are just the ingredients I use, as that’s what was in the cupboard. But the main ones you need are the jam and honey. You could add in sultanas or any other dried fruit, although be easy on them as they can get a bit chewy when eating on the bike. You can really add anything you like! Note, I’m not a nutritionist or know anything about food, I usually just put things together and see what happens. #Experiment
Step 1- Put all your hard ingredients in a good sized mixing bowl. The most featured ingredient should be the oats. That’s about the extent of my measuring.
Step 2 – Put the jam in a bowl and microwave for about 2 mins or until melted. I used about 350 g of jam for my mixture. That is a lot but you need to make sure everything in the mixing bowl is covered to make it stick.
Step 3- Mix in the jam to the hard mix. Making sure everything is thickly coated in the jam. You may have to melt some more jam to get everything coated. Add in the honey as well. Use it as more of a sweetener than a binding agent.
Step 4 – Press down the mixture into a plastic container. Choose the depth of the container based on how deep you want your bar. The more compacted it is now, the better the end product will stick together.
Step 5 – Pop it in the freezer overnight and it should be ready the next day.
Step 6 – The next day, take it out of the freezer and cut into whatever size you want. From normal muesli bar size to bite sized.
Step 7 – Wrap it up in tin foil and pop back in the freezer till you need them.
As the only thing that is holding them together is the frozen jam, if they get hot they do come apart pretty easy. At this time of year it isn’t much of a problem, but come summer it can be a bit messy. But they usually hold their shape well. My daily tin foil intake usually goes up when I start trying to eat them on the run, so I usually stop. I’m not sure tin foil holds much nutritional value. I’m sure cooking them might help them hold their shape but things tend to burn when I start cooking things so I’ll stick to freezing! Like I said at the start, these ingredients were in my cupboard so that’s what I used. But you can add anything, coat them in the jam, and they should stick together giving you a custom sports bar with everything you want and nothing you don’t!