CranApple and Breakfast Fruit Drops Recipe

I'm always on the look out for healthy treats and snacks to give to my boys. Fortunately they absolutely love fruit, but like all children they also love crisps and biscuits. For this reason I prefer to bake them biscuits myself so that I know what's inside, but there isn't always the time and a lot of recipes use too much sugar for my liking.

So I went off to Pinterest in search of some tasty, HEALTHY treats and came across raw fruit bars. They all looked so yummy, and are easy to make.



Instead of copying someone else's recipe, I decided to come up with my own, experimenting over the weekend with various fruit and nuts. They got a good reception from my tripolatas as well as my niece and mum. So on Monday night I made up another batch this time using different ingredients.

The first is based on one of the few breakfast cereals I actually like to eat, the second was basically made up of the all the dried fruits and nuts I had remaining and thought would work well together. Both turned out extremely well, I gave them to the tripolatas on their way home from nursery yesterday and they got a big thumbs up.

Most of the recipes I saw were either in the form of a bar or balls, but I thought to my self, "Do something different", so out came the cake pop molds (they are proving very handy in making many things).

Each batch was enough to make 20 drops, with a little bit left over that I just handed over to the boys.

So here's what you'll need:

Breakfast Drops
1 cup of hazelnuts
1 cup of raisins and sultanas
1/2 cup of dried coconut
1/2 dried banana
1/2 tsp vanilla extract (or to taste)

Place the nuts and raisins & sultanas in a food processor and whizz until they look a little like bread crumbs.

Add the dried coconut and banana, you may want to break the banana into pieces to make it easier to process. Whizz until they're combined with the other ingredients

Add the vanilla and whizz again for a few seconds.

And that's it. Place the mix in a lined baking tray or silicon mold. Press the mix firmly to ensure everything is packed together. If you find that your mix is a little dry you can add a tsp of water, juice or applesauce to the mix. You could also soak the raisins in juice before hand (but beware of the sugar content otherwise it defeats the purpose).
Then put it in the fridge to set for a few hours or overnight.

CranApple Drops
1 cup of hazelnuts
1 cup of raisins
1/2 cup of dried cranberries
1/2 cup of dried apples
3/4 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)

The method for the CranApple Drops is the same as the Breakfast Drops
 

Process the first two ingredients together, then add the dried fruit and then the cinnamon.

Press the mix firmly into the mold or tray and then refrigerate.

Once set, pop them out of the mold and wrap each drop in cling film (they can be cut into bars or rolled into balls if you used a baking try). These will keep in an airtight container in the cupboard for about a week or in the fridge for about one month (but they won't last that long). If you have added juice or apple sauce to your mix it would be better to store these in an airtight container in the fridge.

I have lots of ideas for other fruit and nut combinations, what would you like to see?