Granola Bars from 'Pie Queen' Nicole Rucker

Plus, 'eating the rainbow,' a sweet note from a parsnip aficionado

Nut, oat and dried fruit-filled bars from Nicole Rucker’s James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers.

We have spent the first weeks of 2024 trying to curb our appetites and unhealthy eating habits that piled on pounds over the holidays and have been hard to shake off with the dawn of a new year. Neither my husband nor I made any specific food resolutions in the wake of the calendar flip, but eating well is a constant battle for both of us, especially with the many temptations presented by being in constant proximity to a kitchen stocked with too many tempting goodies and a chief cook—yours truly—inclined to bake butter- and sugar-laden treats.

Some citrus varieties available at our local Trader Joe’s. I often try to sate my sweet tooth with fruit.

In colder weather, filling soups become a go-to meal (you can find my recent posts about lentil soups here and here), but what to do about that nagging sweet tooth? One easy solution that sometimes actually works is fruit. At the moment there’s some delicious citrus available in L.A.—clementines, Cara Cara oranges, satsumas and that enormous, sweet and popular Sumo Citrus mandarin that was born in Japan and is now raised in California.

The colorful interior of Fat + Flour in Culver City.

But after being virtuous for almost three weeks, fruit didn’t cut it; we were missing our treats. Also, I had already broken my non-resolution to stay away from sweets when I met my cousin for lunch at Fat + Flour in Culver City, the newest outpost of the much-vaunted downtown L.A. pie place of award-winning baker Nicole Rucker. At this bright, art-filled cafe, we indulged in grilled cheese and kimchi paninis on crusty house-made focaccia and split a slice of passion fruit tangerine meringue pie. The meringue on top of the bright curd filling was just a smidge too sweet, but the pie was irresistible nonetheless. The crust was especially good.

Nicole Rucker (photo from cover of her book); Fat + Flour server with a slice of passion fruit tangerine meringue pie, and my grilled cheese and kimchi panini.

Chef and owner Nicole, particularly renowned for her pies and desserts, has won multiple awards, including four blue ribbons at the 2012 Good Food Pie Contest, a popular event staged annually by KCRW Radio in Santa Monica. I went home with my cousin’s copy of Rucker’s 2019 James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, Dappled: Baking Recipes for Fruit Lovers, which I promptly ordered after reading through the recipes and deciding I wanted to make every last one. The pictures are just gorgeous, and Rucker’s introduction about how her obsession with fruit began in her grandparents’ garden is a joy to read. A second cookbook is apparently in the works.

(Note: After this post published, Rucker was nominated as a semifinalist in the “Outstanding Chef or Baker” category of the James Beard Foundation Awards for 2024. Finalists will be announced on April 3 and the winners selected on June 10 in Chicago.)

With the wide variety of fruit available year round in L.A., it would be possible to make anything in this book, if not with fresh fruit from the local farmers market, with varieties frozen in their prime. I decided to wait for late spring or summer to make the Apricot Galette and July Flame Peach Pie when apricots and peaches are plentiful. But I don’t see any point in putting off whipping up a batch of raspberry scones, which call for frozen raspberries, (the recipe is previewed on the Amazon site, along with Rucker’s introduction, both of which you can find here), or Avocado Pistachio Pound Cake with Lemon Glaze (avocados are the quintessential California fruit), and especially the intriguing Fermented Banana Cake and the Magic Banana Pudding Cake, also made with fermented bananas.¹

But I left those recipes for another day (maybe tomorrow!) and searched for one I could justify as more healthy that might keep us from tearing into several bags of chocolate chips lurking in the back of the freezer.

Chewy, Nutty, Fruity Granola Bars to the rescue

Most of the ingredients in this granola bar are pretty easy to get or to replace with a substitute that works just as well.

“Virtuously high in fiber and protein” and “refined-sugar free” is how Nicole Rucker describes these snack bars. The only ingredient I had difficulty finding was brown rice syrup, but I finally did locate it at Sprouts, a natural and organic food store. A good substitute would be date syrup, sometimes called silan and often used in Middle Eastern cooking, or honey, though it’s somewhat sweeter. You can read about other alternatives here.

Here is the recipe, slightly adapted from Dappled. It makes 16 bars (or more if you cut them smaller). Rucker says you can use any combination of dried fruits or even freeze-dried fruit “to add an extra crunch.” I subbed dried sour cherries, which I really love, for the strawberries, but otherwise I followed the recipe pretty closely—as I usually do when making something for the first time.

Adds & Subs: You could easily add or substitute some mini chocolate chips, toasted coconut, other roasted nuts, such as hazelnuts, pecans or pistachios, or a spoonful of peanut or almond butter, or exchange cranberries for raisins. Dipping or dripping some milk or dark chocolate on top wouldn’t go amiss—unless you really are watching those calories!

Ingredients:

Coconut or grapeseed oil for greasing

1 cup (90 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats

1 1/4 cups (140 grams) whole unsalted roasted almonds

1 cup (127 grams) whole unsalted roasted peanuts

3/4 cup (84 grams) toasted walnuts, coarsely chopped

1/4 cup (50 grams) dried dates, pitted and diced

1/4 cup (35 grams) dried strawberries, diced (I used 1/4 cup—about 30 grams—dried, sour cherries.)

1/2 cup (80 grams) golden raisins

1 tablespoon flaxseed meal

1/3 cup (107 ml) honey

1/3 cup (80 ml) brown rice syrup

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste or extract (I used the extract.)

Directions:

1. Position a rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Lightly oil a large bowl, wooden spoon and a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Line the bottom and long sides of the pan with parchment paper, lightly oiling the surface and sides of the paper.

3. Place the oats on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven, stirring them often to prevent burning, until lightly browned and fragrant—about 15 minutes.

4. Transfer the nuts and oats to the oiled bowl. Add the dried fruit and flaxseed meal, breaking apart clumps of fruit to distribute evenly throughout the mix.

   

5. Combine the honey, rice syrup, salt, vanilla and 1/4 cup (59 ml) of water in a 2-quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until the syrup reaches 260°F (hard-ball stage) on a candy thermometer. (Note: Rucker says this takes about 5 minutes, but it took about 15 on my stove; the mixture when ready was very bubbly and a bit thick.)

6. Immediately pour the syrup over the nut mixture and stir with the oiled spoon until everything is evenly coated.

   

7. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan and use lightly oiled hands to spread it out evenly. Let the bars cool until they are set but still warm to the touch. Then lift them out, still on the paper, onto a board.

8. With a sharp knife, cut lengthwise down the middle of the oblong, separating the mixture into two long halves. Then cut perpendicularly across the shorter side, making enough parallel cuts (seven) to form 16 bars. Store the bars in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks or in your refrigerator for up to 1 month, assuming they last that long! You can also freeze them.

Kind vs. Mine

The closest comparison to this granola bar might be the Cranberry Almond Kind Bar, in which most of the ingredients are similar; the weight, 40 grams, is almost the same, and the calories, 160, are probably also close.

Mine—a bit rustic looking. Could use pretty packaging..

Kind Cranberry Almond bar (Photo from Kind website)

“So what did you think?” I asked Jeff as he downed his second bar. I could tell they wouldn’t last even one week, never mind a month.

“They’re better than the Kind bars,” he said. “Fresher.”

“Yeah, but if you eat six of them, I don’t think they’re going to be that healthy in the long run.”

“Munch, munch,” he said.

‘Eating the rainbow’

Does the rainbow include port wine and chocolate? (Credit: Mark Dolan)

I received the nicest note from Mark Dolan referencing my most recent post that included a discussion of parsnips. Until last month, Mark authored a thoughtful and engaging weekly newsletter on this site called Why Living Today Rocks, which you can still read. Here’s what Mark wrote, with a couple of small edits. He asked that the name of his wife not be included.

I wanted to thank you for your reference to parsnips last week. It led me on the most unlikely of journeys and ended with this evening's dinner. [My wife] works at a bookstore and promised to bring home the protein source course she would enjoy. I told her I would surprise her with the rest.

After your parsnip story, I revisited the book that transformed my relationship with food forever. …It is titled How Not to Die. Once I got used to it I have found it quite instinctive to eat well without a lot of rules.

One of the fun takeaways is to understand the nature of the special chemicals in certain foods that give them their colors. It provides the reasoning for trying to eat the rainbow for example. 

Anyhow I went to the store and bought some multi-colored carrots. Nowadays whenever I can I buy the mixed colors because of the different chemicals they contain. In addition to carrots I also bought some parsnips and roasted a bunch of them on a sheetpan. Leftovers for days and easy to round out a plate.

I also had some seasoned quinoa with cajun seasoning and turmeric for some more color. [My wife] ended up bringing home a nice piece of steelhead pike. Lotsa color, a bit of everything and tomorrow it will be a big salad so we can take care of the greens we missed tonight. It's not dieting when you just feel like you are just eating the rainbow. Most of all [my wife] thought the parsnips were an awesome treat and I told her how they came to be part of our dinner.

Now we are sipping a nice glass of port in case we didn't get enough dark red yet today :) A bit of dark chocolate for dessert. Have a great evening. 

Mark Dolan

Thanks so much, Mark! The dinner sounds delicious, as well as thoughtful and healthy. The port and chocolate add a hint of mischief, along with more color. I really must learn more about the benefits of “eating the rainbow.”

As always, thank you for being here. I know time is a scarce commodity, so I’m happy you chose to spend some of it with me. Every like, share, comment, referral and subscription means a lot, so thanks again.🤗

See you soon.

Ruth

1. Who knew bananas could be fermented anyway? Did you? I certainly didn’t, but, thanks to Nicole Rucker, now I do. It has to do with mashing very ripe bananas with sugar and letting them sit for a day or two—but there’s more to it than that. I just purchased some bananas, so stay tuned for a future update!