My friend Charlotte is hosting a blog event this month called River Cottage Rocks on her blog Charlotte’s Kitchen Diary. To participate you simply make a recipe from one of the River Cottage books, following a theme, the theme this month was Baking Bliss. Baking is one of my favourite themes for any occasion so of course I wanted to participate! With the hope that summer will arrive here some time soon and the hope of fitting into my summer clothes I have a self-imposed a ban on cakes at the moment, not so good when taking part in a baking themed blogging event! Silly me! While perusing the many River Cottage recipes I came across these Honey and Peanut booster bars from the River Cottage Every Day book. Packed with oats, dried fruit, honey and peanut butter a more healthy than cake option I thought and even better I had all of the ingredients in my cupboard, I love it when a plan comes together!

The were incredibly simple to put together, melting some of the ingredients in a pan then adding the rest. When making them I thought there was a lot of sugar considering there is also honey in the recipe but I followed the recipe including raisins as my dried fruit as that’s all I had. With peanut butter already in the recipe I didn’t see it necessary to add more calories by way of nuts or seeds. I love granola and granola bars but the fat and calorie content often have me leaving these items well alone, sometimes you are better off just having the cake you were avoiding! Where the sugar was concerned I wish I had listened to my gut, these bars are incredibly sweet, I would recommend using at least 50 grams less sugar. There is also an option to use banana rather than peanut butter which I think I will try. Despite the sweetness they were very tasty and so easy to make. If you made the version with banana rather than peanut butter and avoided including any other nuts they would make a good kids school snack.

Honey and Peanut Booster Bars from River Cottage Everyday.

I didn’t change the recipe and just added raisins.

I would recommend adding less sugar