These cookie bars are a Christmas staple in our house and have been for years. The cinnamon makes the house smell all festive and you know it’s not long until the big day!
My mum and I would make them but instead of cutting the tray bake in to bars we would use biscuits cutters to cut out Christmas shapes to make them even more festive and so we could give them as gifts (it was totally not so we could sit on the sofa watching Christmas TV and scoffing a bowl of all the offcuts of cookie left behind by cutting out shapes)
In recent years I’ve made them with my children and we’ve adapted the recipe to be vegan and it’s also soya and nut free for allergies. Kids' opinion on them was that they were “yum yum”.
So here’s what you need:
Ingredients
270g vegan baking spread
160g caster sugar
160g soft dark brown sugar
2 tsp egg replacer and 4tbsp water ( you could make 2 flax ‘eggs’ if you prefer
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
380g plain flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
110g rolled oats
220g raisins
(As usual, check out your local refill shop and you can probably purchase most of the ingredients plastic free, you can also get vegan butter in foil wrapping to avoid buying a plastic tub)
Method
Preheat the oven to 150C.
Put the butter and both sugars in a bowl and cream together.
Add the egg replacer mix, mixing well.
Beat in the vanilla extract.
Add the flour, salt, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and oats to a separate bowl, and mix well.
Then combine the dry mix with the butter mixture and beat until well mixed.
Stir in the raisins until evenly distributed.
Put the mix in a traybake tin, if it’s too thick and sticky thin with a little milk first (we use oat) .
Bake in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes, or until golden brown and firm. It will depend on the size of tin you used as to how thick your bake is, so check regularly to make sure it’s not burning.
Once they are cooled you can take them out the tin as they are easier to cut in to bars when cool. (Or you can cut in to Christmas shapes to give them as gifts and then so you don’t waste anything eat the leftover bits like we did!)
Notes: You can do steps 2-6 altogether if using a food mixer as the ‘all in one method’ just don’t use a mixer for the raisins as we want to keep them whole so you get large juicy raisins in the bars.