Can I Use Date Syrup in Breakfast Bars 2.0?

Asked by Folie. Answered on 30th May 2016

Full question

The only dates available locally are expensive and horrid, so I considered buying medjools on the internet to make Breakfast Bars 2.0. Then I "discovered" a thing called date syrup and wonder if I might save a step of the recipe if I could just buy date syrup and use that instead of boiling up the dates and making a puree. Would this work do you think?

Our answer

Nigella's Breakfast Bars 2.0 (from SIMPLY NIGELLA) recipe is a mixture of oats, cornflakes, dried berries and seeds that are bound with a date puree. The puree adds sweetness but also helps to bind the mixture together so that after baking it can be cut into bars or squares.

The home-made date puree is quite thick. However many date syrups are pourable and so are thinner than the home-made version which could mean that the bars don't set and are crumbly. In addition, we have seen date syrups that are made from whole, blended dates and other syrups that are extracted from dates (which have the sugar but not the fibre of the dates). So we are not sure that the syrup will really be a good substitute. However if you did want to try with the syrup as an alternative then make sure that it is the type of date syrup made from whole, pureed dates.