Raspberry Oat Slice {Easy Snack Bars}

A delicious, fresh-tasting raspberry oat slice with shredded coconut that's perfect for breakfast, brunch, snacks or as a dessert.

Raspberry Oat Slice

Having snacks hanging about the house goes hand in hand with having kids, right?

It certainly does for my lot. We're mostly grazers here and while we try to not be grazers, grazers we are and that means you can often hear the sound of cupboard doors opening and tins rattling as the kids are searching for snacks.

And so I like to have some sort of bar that the kids can grab and go with. Try these raspberry slices: They're soft, sweet and surprisingly good for you!

I often use these for lunchboxes and the kids have them at morning break but they're often hunted down after school when those ravenous tummies come bounding through the door.

We love an oatmeal bar in this house and take most opportunities to add some fruity flavors to, well, any kinda snack bar and these raspberry oatmeal slice bars are a fresh and yummy snack that keep well and keep the kids going.

Ingredients

The ingredients are simple, but they combine together to make a rather scrumptious snack bar:

Fresh Raspberries

Fresh raspberries give these bars a fresh zingy taste. I buy raspberries fresh when they're in season where I live and they're beautifully sweet and juicy.

Frozen raspberries have too much moisture in them for these bars and the extra water seeps into the oatmeal mixture so I recommend using fresh.

Shredded Coconut

Shredded coconut adds a nice flavor and some added natural sweetness. Combining it with the rolled oats helps to keep the crumb together. I buy huge packs of this from our local health food shop because it's the cheapest place I've found to buy it but you can usually buy it easily from your local supermarket.

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Oatmeal

I often use oatmeal to make flour when I'm baking but for snack bars, rolled oats used as they come work really well. Oatmeal is higher in protein than other grains and so these bars help to keep you going for longer and so I like to add these to the kids lunchboxes for morning break time as it can be a while to go until lunchtime!

For the oatmeal crumble mixture you make for this recipe I buy whatever oats I have or can easily buy. There's a fairly large and often confusing range of oatmeal available in our shops, but as long as there's nothing extra added to the oats, use whatever you have.

Variations

While I've added fresh raspberries to these bars because I think they go so well with shredded coconut, you can easily make some variations to this recipe.

Here's some you might want to try:

• Blueberries - This recipe works easily as well with blueberries. If you have fresh blueberries feel free to swap the raspberries for blueberries. The quantities remain the same.
• White choc chips - For a chocolaty version try adding a quarter of a cup of white choc chips to the mixture, or throw them on top right before you bake in the oven.
• Vanilla or Almond extract - Try adding a teaspoon of vanilla or almond extract (or this vanilla bean paste).

Baking Tips

Here's a few things you can do to help your bars turn out perfectly every time:

• Line your baking dish with parchment paper and it'll be easy to remove from the tin
• Grease the parchment paper with coconut oil (or butter) and the bake will slide out
• Leave the bake to fully cool down before slicing it into bars. It will harden up as it cools and the melted butter sets again, and you'll be able to remove the bake from the tin in one go and the neatly slice it up

Storing Raspberry Oat Slices

These raspberry oatmeal bars keep really well as long as they're in an airtight container. Store them at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Freezing Oatmeal Bars

You can freeze oatmeal, although when baking with fresh fruit I prefer these fresh and not thawed. I find they have too much moisture in them when they've been thawed, but this may just be me!

If you do want to try freezing these, once your bars have cooled and been sliced up, wrap them in parchment and freeze them individually. Then you can take them out as they're needed.

More Oatmeal Snacks

• Cinnamon Flapjacks
• No bake lemon curd bars
• Date lunchbox bars
• Coconut & cherry flapjacks
• Healthy apple slices
• Peanut butter and choc chip snack bars

How To Make Raspberry Oat Slices

Ingredients

• 2 Cups Raspberries Fresh, washed, whole
• 1¼ Cups Flour I used white Spelt flour, you could use whole wheat flour
• ¼ Cup Oatmeal
• ¼ Cup Shredded coconut
• ¼ Cup Coconut sugar
• ½ Cup Butter With salt, fridge cold

Instructions

• Heat your oven to either 190c or 375f and line a square baking pan with parchment paper
• In a large bowl add the flour, coconut sugar, oatmeal and shredded coconut
• Chop the cold butter into small diced cubes and using your fingers, rub the butter into the dry ingredients and form a crumble
• Tip ¾ of the crumble mix into the lined baking tin and using the back of a dessert spoon, compress the mixture into the tin
• Sprinkle your fresh raspberries on top of the mixture and then add the remaining oat mixture and compress it over the raspberries
• Bake your raspberry bars for 25-30 minutes until the top is golden brown and then remove from the oven, leaving it in the tin for at least ½ hour or until completely cool. The bake will harden up as it cools
• Once the bake is completely cold, slice your raspberry oat bars

Raspberry Oat Slice Recipe