Oat-y Date Bars
The perfect after-school-mid-morning-could-be-breakfast treat
The Green Spoon•May 27, 2025
One of the great things about this recipe is that 100% of the sweetness comes from the dates—the dough itself is unsweetened—and you really don’t miss the sugar at all. This recipe makes a fairly big batch, and though it can easily be halved for more modest proportions, we recommend going big and freezing half the batch so you can throw a frozen square into a snack box whenever the need arises. They’re good right out of the freezer, thawed, warm, or three days old. If you want to experiment with the jammy filling—or don’t have quite enough dates on hand—these are great with fresh raspberries folded into the dates, or with a nice tart jam layered over, folded into or used instead of the date purée if you’re in a pinch (raspberry, plum, or apricot jams would all be good contenders). Huge thanks to designer-cook-mom extraordinaire Mamie Rheingold for helping us test this one!
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We’re Fanny and Greta, dear friends with deep backgrounds in sustainable food. This is a space for the food lovers, home cooks, would-be home cooks and anyone who needs a bit of inspiration and gentle guidance in their family kitchen.
Instructions
Turn your oven to 350°F and line a 9" x 13" metal baking dish with straight sides and square corners with a piece of parchment long enough that it comes up out of the pan on either side. This will enable you to lift the bars out of the pan more easily when done.
Combine the pitted dates (2–2 ½ cups) and water (1 ½ cups) in a saucepan and simmer over medium-low heat until the dates are extremely soft and jammy and can be mashed into a loose paste. Use more water as needed. About 5 minutes.
Make the oat flour: place oats (1 ½ cups) in a blender or food processor and blend on high until they form a fine flour, stopping to stir once or twice. This step won’t take more than 20ish seconds and should yield 1½ cups of oat flour.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix the almond flour (1 ½ cups), oat flour (1 ½ cups), rolled oats (1 cup), baking powder (1 tsp), flax (1 Tbsp), sea salt (1 tsp) and cinnamon (1 tsp).
Add the melted butter (10 Tbsp), eggs (2 large) and vanilla (1 ½ tsp) to the dry and thoroughly combine until it comes together to form a soft dough.
Pat about ⅔ of the dough evenly into the pan (this will be the bottom "crust"). Follow with the date purée, spreading the ~2 cups in an even layer. (The jammy layer shouldn't be more than ½" thick.)
In a bowl, combine the chopped pecans and/or walnuts (½ cup) with the remaining ⅓ of the dough and scatter it overtop of the date layer—it should look like a crumble topping.
Sprinkle with another scattering of rolled oats if it’s a bit sparse
Place in the middle of the oven and bake for ~30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through, until very lightly golden brown.
Allow to cool completely before topping with a pinch of flakey salt (if using), cutting into squares and serving.
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