Oh Nuts Blog

Happy September! In many parts of the country school will be starting soon, and what better way to welcome the change in schedule than with a great back-to-school snack? These soft, chewy homemade granola bars are perfect for breakfasts on the go, tucking into school lunches, or between-meals snacks.

They're equally popular with adults--I particularly like them as a pre-workout snack, because they give me great energy without being too heavy. Best of all, each recipe makes a big pan so you can make several week's worth of granola bars in just an hour.

Here's what you need for homemade granola bars:

• 2.5 cups old-fashioned oats


• 1/2 cup shredded coconut


• 2.5 cups fruit-and-nuts trail mix


• 1/2 cup brown sugar


• 1/2 cup honey


• 4 tbsp butter


• 2 tsp vanilla extract


• 1 tsp salt


• 1/4 cup peanut butter


• 1/3 cup miniature chocolate chips

The star of the show will be this Cranberry Trail Mix. I like it because it's colorful and has a great variety of flavors: it includes peanuts, two kinds of raisins, cranberries, and pumpkin seeds. You could also try one of these other trail mixes: Energizer Mix, Raisin Mix, Trail Deluxe Mix, or Ambrosia Delight Mix.

To give these bars a lot of flavor, we need to toast the oats and coconut to deepen their taste. So preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and spread the oats and the shredded coconut out on a baking sheet.

Toast the oats and coconut for about 10-12 minutes, but watch it carefully. Stir the mixture after every 2-3 minutes so that it doesn't burn. It's done when the oats and coconut are a golden brown color and the mixture smells nice and toasty. You can turn your oven off, because that's all the cooking these homemade granola bars require!

While the oats are toasting, place the butter, sugar, honey, peanut butter, salt, and vanilla in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir while the mixture melts, and bring it just to a simmer. It doesn't need to boil, you just want to make sure that the sugars and butter are dissolved and the mixture is really fluid.

Once the toasted oats are out and slightly cooled, place them in a large bowl and add your trail mix. Toss the whole thing with your hands so that it's well-mixed.

Pour the sugar mixture over the dry ingredients, and stir until it's combined and everything starts to stick together. Be sure to really dig around and make sure there are no dry pockets waiting at the bottom of the bowl.

Scrape the granola mixture into a 9x13" pan that's lined with foil and sprayed with nonstick cooking spray. The foil and spray will make the bars much easier to remove later. Now the most important part of this recipe is making sure that the bars are really compacted, otherwise they won't hold together well when they're cut. So spray your hands with cooking spray, or wet them with water, and really press down hard on the bars to compact them.

Sprinkle the miniature chocolate chips on top of the bars. Here's my secret method for making my bars really solid: I cover the top of the pan with waxed paper, then put another 9x13" pan on top of the first. Then I fill the top pan with something heavy (usually cookbooks). The weights press down on the pan while the bars cool and produce a nice, compact, stable bar without any extra work on my part!

You'll want to let these cool for at least a few hours, to give the sugar syrup time to really set and hold all of the dry ingredients together. You can speed up the process by refrigerating the bars for about an hour. Once they're cool, lift them out of the pan using the foil as handles, and use a long sharp knife to cut them into bars. I usually get 16-20 bars out of one pan, but it all depends on what size you like your homemade granola bars.

Wrap the granola bars individually in cling wrap or waxed paper. They can be stored at room temperature for up to a week, but they keep much longer in the refrigerator, and practically forever in the freezer. I think once you've tried homemade granola bars, with completely customized fruits and nuts, you'll never go back to storebought granola bars again.

All text and photos (c) 2010 Elizabeth LaBau

Apples, pomegranates, and star fruit are big hits for the Rosh Hashanah season. Rosh Hashanah falls out at a great part of the year where many new fruits have come into season.

Apples are typically enjoyed with a healthy dosing of honey on top. It is said over the blessing of ‘boreh pri ha-etz’ and is eaten during the Rosh Hashanah Yom Tov meals.

There are different interpretations as to why we eat apples over any other fruit. One is that the field in which Isaac blessed Jacob with was actually an apple field. Another opinion is that apples were the most readily accessible fruit for the Jewish people and were always in constant abundance.

The history of the apple begins with creation. By eating the apple on the anniversary of the creation of man, it connects us with our past. It reminds man of his imperfections and that he should strive to reach greatness, which is fitting for the days before Yom Kippur.

Along with fruits there are other foods that are customarily eaten such as carrots or fish. The Yiddish word for carrot is “meren”. It also means to increase. This is symbolic for Rosh Hashanah, because we want to increase in our good deeds for the New Year. We eat fish because of the idea of multiplying as a nation.

The second night of Rosh Hashanah is when the new fruit is introduced. Pomegranates and star fruit are some typical Rosh Hashanah new fruits. The new fruits symbolize continuity and prosperity and are a small celebration of human life that we can eat and enjoy some of G-d’s precious gifts.

It is also customary to substitute your regular braided challah for a round challah This references life and that it is an everlasting circle. There is a custom to have a challah braided in the shape of a crown as a symbol of G-d being the King of kings.

Rosh Hashanah, the celebration of the Jewish New Year, begins Wednesday evening at sundown. We've already posted about Rosh Hashanah food customs and Rosh Hashanah gifts. It might be too late to order a gift delivered, but there's still plenty of time to partake in one big Rosh Hashanah custom: baking a honey cake.

Honey is a very traditional food during Rosh Hashanah. Its sweetness symbolizes the wish for a happy, sweet life in the upcoming year. It's common to have a Rosh Hashanah feast end with a beautiful, moist honey cake. And even if you don't celebrate Rosh Hashanah yourself, you can still enjoy this delicious cake full of fall flavors and spices. Here's what you'll need to make your own honey cake:

Rosh Hashanah Honey Cake
adapted from a recipe by Marcy Goldman

• 3.5 cups flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp + 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup honey
• 1.5 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup warm coffee
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 3/4 cup chopped nuts

You can use your favorite nuts in this recipe. I'm using these delicious Cinnamon Pecans, that have a crunchy coating of cinnamon and sugar on the outside. The spices will go perfectly with the honey cake, and the pecans add just the right amount of crunch.

First things first, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and prepare your pan. This honey cake can be made in 3 large loaf pans, two 9" cake pans, a 9x13" rectangular pan, or, my personal favorite, a bundt pan. I think the bundt cake looks the best, and--here is the terrible truth--this cake has a tendency to fall a little bit in the middle, so the bundt pan does the best job of hiding this. But whichever pan you choose, make sure you spray it really well with nonstick cooking spray.

The beauty of this recipe is its simplicity. You don't need special equipment, or ingredients, or even a mixer! Your own arm and a whisk will do. So start by whisking together all of the liquid ingredients: the eggs, honey, oil, vanilla, coffee, and orange juice all go in a bowl together.

Next, add both sugars to the liquids and keep whisking until they're dissolved into the liquid.

Now it's time to combine all the dry ingredients. This means the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice all get whisked together in a big bowl. You're going to add the wet ingredients to this, so make sure you use a bowl that's big enough to hold everything.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, and pour the wet ingredients into it. Once it's all poured in, use that trusty whisk and stir everything together until it's smooth. At first you'll see some small flour lumps, but keep whisking gently and you'll end up with a beautiful thick honey-colored batter.

Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about the nuts. Chop them up coarsely--I like to leave some bigger chunks so that they don't just disappear into the batter. They do need a little chopping, though, otherwise the pecans are just too big. However, don't add them to the batter just yet.

Pour about 2/3 of your honey cake batter into the prepared pan. I like to keep the nuts and the batter separate, because the batter is thin enough that the nuts might just sink to the bottom--or in the case of a bundt cake, the top--of the cake, and that wouldn't look or taste very nice.

Now sprinkle all those chopped nuts on top of the layer of cake batter. Since they're being added to the middle, they have less chance of sinking straight to the bottom. After the nuts are added, pour the remaining cake batter on top of them.

You could just leave it that way, but I like to take a knife and swirl it gently through the batter, to disperse the nuts more evenly. Once you're done tinkering with the cake, put it into your preheated oven. Baking time depends on which pans you use. For a bundt pan, it will be between 60-75 minutes, while smaller loaf and cake pans are about 45-55 minutes. The best way to tell when it's done will be to press gently on top of the cake. It should spring back when you press down.

Here you can see how mine fell a little bit in the middle. All the moisture that gives it that great flavor and texture makes the batter a little delicate, and prone to falling if it's disturbed or even just baked in an uneven oven. However, the taste is still fantastic, and with a bundt pan, no one will even know.

Let the cake cool in its pan for 15 minutes before inverting it onto a cooling rack and allowing it to cool completely at room temperature. While it's baking it will smell fantastic, and you might be tempted to eat a piece while it's still warm from the oven. However, if you can hold yourself back, you'll be rewarded. While the cake is good when it's warm, the taste and texture really improve after it's sat and cooled for a few hours.

If you wrap this honey cake will with cling wrap, it keeps phenomenally well at room temperature for 3-4 days. It's great plain, but even better served with a side of spiced apples (another traditional Rosh Hashanah food.) Have a sweet New Year!

All images (c) Elizabeth LaBau. Text Elizabeth LaBau, adapted from a recipe by Marcy Goldman.

Now that we're in October, I think it's safe to say we can start cooking with fall ingredients. Cranberries, pumpkin, baked apples and pears, spices...all of these signify, to me, the arrival of autumn and all that's associated with it. Even though the weather is still warm and summery where I live, if I make a big bowl of soup for dinner, followed by a slice of warm pumpkin bread, I can almost trick myself into thinking that fall is just outside of my door.

Recently I made my first pumpkin bread batch of the season, and it was heavenly. Sweet, moist, fragrant with spices and topped with salted pumpkin seeds, it brought autumn right into my kitchen. So whether you live in a place where the leaves have started turning and the air is cool, or whether, like me, you have eternally sunny skies, you can bring a bit of fall into your life with this easy pumpkin bread recipe.

Pepita Pumpkin Bread
yield: 1 loaf

• 1-3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp allspice
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling!)
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/4 cup pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds)

Before we go any further, let me explain about the pepitas. Pepitas are hulled pumpkin seeds. If you've ever scooped the seeds out of a pumpkin, baked them, and then cracked them between your teeth and eaten the seeds inside, well, you've had pepitas. They're slender and green, with a savory, nutty flavor and a great crunch. I like to sprinkle salted pepitas on top of my pumpkin bread--the green seeds look beautiful on the orange bread, and the salty nuts add a nice contrast to the sweet, spicy bread. If the salty nuts sound like too much, you could go with roasted unsalted pepitas instead.

Back to business! Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and spray a 9x5 loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. You could also make 3 mini loaves, or about a dozen muffins instead.

We're going to start by combining most of our dry ingredients, save the sugars. So in a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves. I like a pretty spicy bread, so if you prefer your bread to taste mostly of pumpkin, you can reduce these spices by up to half.

Now it's time to get the wet ingredients going. I'm going to use my stand mixer, but you could use a hand mixer or even do it by hand with a whisk. In this case a mixer is a better option, because it will do a better job of beating more air into the bread so it's not as dense, but making pumpkin bread by hand certainly isn't a tragedy. So, start by combining the oil and the sugars in a large bowl and beat them for about a minute. The mixture will look clumpy and grainy.

Add one egg and beat until it's incorporated (about 30 seconds) then scrape down the bowl and add the second egg. Beat for about a minute, then scrape down the bowl again. By now the mixture should be glossy and smooth.

Add the vanilla extract, and then spoon in the pumpkin puree. Mix until the pumpkin is incorporated, and scrape down the bowl again for good measure.

Now it's time for the dry ingredients that you've already whisked together. Add them all at once and then mix slowly, just until they disappear into the batter. You don't want to overmix, because that will make the pumpkin bread tough. You can even stop the mixer before the flour's fully incorporated and finish stirring it in by hand.

The batter's almost done, and from personal experience, I can tell you that it tastes great. However, you'll notice that it's still quite thick and gloopy at this point, so it's time for the final, exotic ingredient...

Water! Okay, so it's not exotic, but it is necessary. With the mixer running on low, slowly stream in the water until it's totally mixed in. At this point you'll have a silky-smooth batter that smells fantastic.

Scrape the batter into the sprayed loaf pan. It's almost ready to go in the oven, but we need our final dusting of pepitas.

Coarsely chop the pepitas. I like to keep mine in big chunks, and even leave some whole because I think they look best that way.

Once they're chopped, sprinkle the pepitas all over the top of the batter. Put the loaf pan on a baking sheet, so that the bottom doesn't bake too quickly and burn. Bake the loaf at 350 degrees for about 60-70 minutes--the exact time will depend on your pan and your oven. Start checking it after 45 minutes, and if it looks like the top is getting too dark, cover the top with foil while it finishes baking. It's done when you press down on the top and it springs back.

Once it's out of the oven, allow it to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning it out and letting it cool completely on a wire rack. I like it just slightly warm, but I do think the flavor and texture improve if you let it sit until it's completely cool. (Unfortunately, patience has never been one of my virtues.) If you wrap it well, this pepita pumpkin bread will keep at room temperature for about 5 days, but it also freezes beautifully, so if you have leftovers, you can store them in the freezer for several months.

The beauty of this pumpkin bread recipe is how flexible it is. If you don't want to sprinkle the pepitas on top, you can stir them into the batter. Or you can add an endless assortment of other mix-ins instead. Here are a few more ideas of great pumpkin bread additions:

• Chocolate chips, miniature or full-sized
• Butterscotch chips
• Chopped walnuts
• Pecans
• Cinnamon Pecans
• Black Raisins
• Golden Raisins
• Crimson Raisins
• Dried Cranberries

There are so many possible pumpkin bread variations, I don't even need fall weather. I'll just sit and enjoy my pumpkin bread until winter comes.

All text and photos (c) 2010 Elizabeth LaBau