How to make my no-bake bars stick together better?

Cafe Society
1

I have a recipe for no-bake fruit and nut bars (oatmeal, rice cereal, lots of dried fruit and nuts) that is bound with boiled brown sugar and honey.

I’ve made it 3 times, adjusting the amount of brown sugar or adding corn syrup so that it mixes better. The last time (extra brown sugar, no corn syrup) it bound together pretty well for the first day. But after the second day they started to fall apart again.

What can I do so that a) there’s enough liquid to stir them together, and b) they’ll stay hard and stuck together for 4 or 5 days?

2

What are you doing with the dried fruit? Have you tried putting it through a meat grinder (or the equivalent) so more sticky bits are exposed?

3

I’m chopping them with a knife. They’re pretty well chopped, I don’t think chopping smaller will make a difference. The bars are sticky, they just fall apart over time.

4

(here’s my one bump) – No other ideas??

5

I have no idea if it will work, but my first thought was to add a little peanut butter to the dry ingredients. At least that’s the direction I’d experiment in, if it were me. I think it would be yummy, even if it doesn’t do the trick and you end up with a mess. :slight_smile:

6

Have you tried baking them?

7

Can you post the recipe?

I suspect what is happening is that the bars are taking on moisture. Sugar is hygroscopic, so if the bars sit out in the open air, they’ll absorb water.

Try putting the bars into sealed Ziploc bags and see if that prolongs their life.

Also, is the oatmeal cooked before you put it in?

8

Wouldn’t boiling the Brown sugar and honey longer work? I would think if you boil it the a high enough temperature (around 240-250) you would achieve the “soft ball-firm ball” stage of candy making and the mixture would then hold together.

9

I was wondering about that aspect of the recipe. But doesn’t adding high-fructose corn syrup to a glucose sugar solution inhibit crystallization?

10

Here is the recipe. It does call for peanut butter to be added to the boiled sugar mixture, but when I tried it, by the time the peanut butter was dissolved, the mixture was starting to thicken up, and that made it very hard to combine with the dry ingredients.

The oatmeal is raw.

The ziploc bag idea sounds good. I’ve just been cutting them and leaving them in the pan with plastic wrap over it.

I’ve never made candy, but it did sound like the boiling sugar phase was critical to making it harden up as it cooled. Which it does – not really rock hard – it’s a little sticky, but not too much.

I just re-read the recipe, and she’s added a comment at step 8 about what sweetener to use. I am curious what sweetener she is referring to that Starbucks uses that is not widely available… I’m going to see if the Starbucks web site lists the ingredients. I never thought of doing that!

11

I checked their web site, they do not list ingredients for this thing (“chewy fruit and nut bar”), so I emailed them a question…

12

Marshmallow creme?:dubious:

13

Agree.

Cook the sugar mixture longer. Be carefull or the opposite thing will happen.

14

How long should I cook it? And how long is too long? The recipe says one minute, and when I do it it’s really foamy and boiling for a minute or almost two. I don’t have a candy thermometer.