Breakfast Bars

I recalled the other day that I had two cans of condensed milk in the cupboard. Well, I only make one recipe with condensed milk, so it was time to make Nigella Lawson's Breakfast Bars! And can I take a moment to comment on the use of baby pink and baby blue on her website? (I got the recipe from the Nigella Express cookbook so I had never visited before) Everyone seems to describe these bars as 'cereal and milk' in bar-form but I see them more as sweet granola bars. And so versatile - you can throw in whatever you like.

I only knew condensed milk from the rare times I've had Vietnamese coffee. I knew it was thick and sweet. It is imperative to heat the milk before mixing in the mixin's because it's so thick. I scorched it a tiny bit this time - still getting used to our electric elements, I suppose. Just be careful not to cut yourself on the metal lid when you're spooning the leftover milk out of the can and into your face. Because you will be doing it. And don't even try looking at the nutritional info.

I put on some No Doubt and got to work figuring out the amounts of the different ingredients. Unlike a good British home chef, I do not have a kitchen scale. And no one else does either over on this side of the world, so please start putting cup measures with the grams! I see on Nigella's website you can switch between imperial and metric, but it's still all weights! After a complicated few minutes at a cooking conversion site (the first time I made them), I seem to have settled on the following:
2 1/4 cups oats
2/3 cup coconut
3/4 cup raisins/dried cranberries
3/4 cup nuts (this time: peanuts and walnuts)
3/4 cup seeds (this time: more walnuts, sunflower seeds)

It quickly makes a thick oaty mess that gets pressed into a 13x9" pan and baked for an hour at a low temperature. Then you have delicious snack bars for the week! Even the hubs likes them, and he doesn't like coconut. And as mentioned before, you can of course throw in whatever you want. Have fun exploring your local bulk store! They're the best. I also discovered that heating them up for a few seconds in the microwave and then eating them with vanilla ice cream is quite tasty...