Baby Friendly Cereal Bars

Baby Charlie really likes to eat, and I really like to feed him things that are good for him, free of sodium and sugars and preservatives that I can't even pronounce.  The ingredients on some manufactured "healthy" baby treats make me shudder.  I turned to the internet to get some ideas for making my own.  That's where I discovered Lou's awesome site.  She's got some amazing healthy, baby-friendly recipes.  First I tried following her recipe for these cereal bars to the letter, but for whatever reason, it just didn't work for me.  I couldn't get the dough to be an actual workable dough for the life of me, and I certainly couldn't get it to roll out.  I have no idea what I did wrong, or why it didn't work out, but I didn't let it discourage me, and I did what I always do.  I used her great recipe as my base, made some adjustments, and tried again.

I finally achieved success, and so far we've had apple, banana, and yellow squash cereal bars.  The baby thinks these are the best thing ever, and I'm pretty happy with them myself.  He gets his yummy snack without all that added stuff that I don't want him to have, and I get peace of mind from knowing that he's starting off his life eating well.

Hmmmm what's this?

Baby Friendly Cereal Bars

Ingredients:

• 3/4 heaping cup rolled oats, ground into flour in food processor or coffee grinder
• 1 TBSP whole rolled oats
• 4 TBSP puree of whatever your baby loves, for baking
• 3 TBSP liquid of choice (breast milk, formula, water, juice, etc.  I used breast milk)
• More puree of whatever for inside of bars
  
  

Oh, I think these are apple.  I love apple!

Directions:

1. Mix oat flour, whole oats, liquid of choice, and puree of whatever in a big bowl.
2. Put in refrigerator to chill for at least an hour.  I accidentally forgot about the squash batch I was making and left it over night.  That was actually the easiest to work with.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
4. Divide dough in half.  Then do it again.  Then again.  You'll have eight pieces of dough of roughly the same size.
5. Roll out the dough, if you can get that to work.  I couldn't, so I just squished it into a uniformly thick rectangle with my fingers.  I'd did this on a silpat, but you could probably used waxed or parchment paper.
6. Spread a thin layer of puree of whatever onto dough rectangle.
7. Fold over ends; then fold sides.  I folded in the ends just a tiny bit, then I folded each side toward the middle, so it was in thirds.
8. Pinch dough together at seams.
9. Bake for 10 minutes.  I put mine on a silpat so they wouldn't stick.
10. Flip bars and bake for five more minutes.
11. Cool completely before offering to baby.
    

Store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.  I actually have no idea how long these will last in the fridge, because Charlie eats his in a couple of days time.

Enjoy!