ALDI Budget Bakes – Homemade Cereal Bar | AD

Last Updated on 6 July 2023 by Colette

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Lockdown has seen us make over our garden, eat at least two meals a day together at the dining table (breakfast is hit and miss as we all wake up at different times), rise to the challenge of distance learning, and our new puppy has taken up lots of our time and provided welcome distraction. What we haven’t done a lot of is baking but now the weather is a bit greyer and our house a lot quieter with two children back in school, it’s the perfect opportunity for Chloe and I to enjoy some one on one time and get our bake on together with ALDI!

Baking seems to have been a particularly popular pass time during Lockdown and as a result we’ve seen shortages of yeast, flour and eggs – none of these things are included in my easy, no fuss cereal bar recipe so you shouldn’t struggle for ingredients!

Now, whilst my sister loves to make fancy cakes and cookies, I prefer no fuss, chuck it all in bakes – especially when I’m baking with the kids!  They get bored easily and really just want to lick out the bowl and eat what they’ve made!

Baking can get expensive when there’s lots of fancy ingredients but, this budget bake with ALDI has got you covered! Our simple, four ingredient homemade cereal bar is, like all the best recipes, one that was passed to me by a friend about ten years ago and has been adapted and simplified to suit our family’s tastes. (I believe the original inspiration for the recipe was a Nigella Lawson bake!)

Featuring just four ingredients (all of which you can pick up in your local ALDI without blowing your budget!) and with no added sugar, this cereal bar is an inexpensive, sweet bake packed with oats, dried fruit and seeds and can be adapted by adding different dried fruits, changing the seeds or drizzling with chocolate for a bit of an extra treat. It has a sticky, slightly chewy texture similar to a flapjack.

Ingredients

Now this is something of a no measure, chuck it all in recipe so don’t worry too much about the amounts, it really doesn’t need to be precise (which absolutely suits my baking style!). Once you’ve made it for the first time you’ll see what I mean. Obviously a tin of condensed milk is a fixed size and the other ingredients are lead by that. I often double up and make twice the amount as it’s so moreish and stores well too!

Tin of condensed milk

250g of rolled oats

125g mixed seeds (you can use just pumpkin seeds or similar if you prefer!)

100g dried cranberries

Method

Now as I’ve said, there isn’t a lot of weighing and measuring in this recipe, and there isn’t a lot of faff either – the method is simple making it perfect for baking with the kids.

Firstly, stick the oven on and preheat to 140°C and grease a 9 x 13 inch baking tin. (Both jobs I often forget to do first!)

Pour the whole tin of condensed milk into a pan and heat gently, you will notice that the consistency of the condensed milk changes and becomes much thinner as it warms.

This is when you want to remove the condensed milk from the heat and add the other ingredients. I tend to chuck in the cranberries and seeds first, then just add porridge oats, stirring as you go, until it feels like you can’t add any more without it being too dry, you wanted everything to be nicely coated and sticky – remember I said this isn’t a heavily measured and accurate recipe! (You can mix the seeds, cranberries and oats in a bowl first then add the warmed condensed milk but I tend to just do it all in the pan is it’s one less thing to wash up – are you noticing a theme here?)

Spoon the mixture into your baking tin, pressing it down and into the corners with a spatula to get it nice and level (if it’s too lumpy it won’t bake evenly!).

(The baking tray I used this time was too big as I forget I wasn’t making a double mixture so we just kept the mixture fairly central and pressed it down evenly – I didn’t want it to be too thin)

Pop it in the oven and let it bake for forty minutes. Once you’ve removed it from the oven, leave it to cool for about 15 minutes before cutting into evenly sized bars. (If you leave it to cool for too long it will be much harder to cut!)

This fruity, oaty bar is great with your mid-morning brew, packed into a Tupperware box for a picnic or a long walk or even as an “on the go” breakfast when you’re back to work!

Have you been doing any baking during Lockdown? Would love to know if you’ve discovered any new recipes of if you’ve been perfecting some family favourites!