At Home with UAEX

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Tasty Thursday with Tori: Berry Blast Bars

Original Author: Tori Copeland, Lawrence County | Adapted for Blog: Torrie Smith, Van Buren County

Tori Copeland is the Lawrence County Extension Agent - Family and Consumer Sciences/4-H. Every Thursday she will be bringing you a healthy new recipe to try with your family.

Oats are part of the grain group and classified as a whole grain. They high in Fiber, Iron, Vitamin E, Copper, Zinc, Magnesium and Protein. If you eat ½ cup cooked oats per day, it counts as 1 ounce of your daily intake of grains. Arkansas grows about 10,000 acres of oats every year, which goes into making breakfast items, oat flour, and animal feeds.

There are 4 types of oats you can buy:

1. Oat Groats which are whole oat kernel cooked like rice or other whole grains;

2. Rolled Oats (Old Fashioned Oats) have been heated and pressed flat with steel rollers so they cook in about 5 minutes;

3. Quick-Cooking Oats (Instant Oats) have been pre-cooked, dried and pressed very thin so they can be cooked in about 1 minute;

4. Steel Cut Oats are groats thinly sliced lengthwise, so they take a fairly long time to cook.

Step One:

Preheat the oven to 350°F and spray square baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. Mix flour, oats, sugar, baking soda, salt, egg, butter, vegetable oil, and milk in a large bowl until a doughy ball is formed.

Step Two:

Measure out 1 ½ cups of dough and press to the bottom of the pan. In a separate bowl, stir jam and strawberries. Spread mixture over the dough in the pan. Press the rest of the dough with your hands and put on top of jam mixture. Dough will not completely cover the top.

Step Three:

Bake for 25 minutes and let cool for 15 minutes. Cut into 12 bars.

Berry Blast Bars

This recipe came from the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service’s Cooking with Extension Cookbook and the information comes from Arkansas Foods: Let’s Eat Some… Oats series. For more information on oats, contact your local county extension agent!