Raspberry Granola Bar Surprise + Blueberry Buckle!

Healthy Desserts?

I would like to preface this post with a few notes and excuses. I would like to apologize for the tardiness of this post. The excuses are as follows: this is my first blog (go easy on me), I couldn’t find the author invitation (Jon hid it in my gmail account), and apparently I am a procrastinator. Luckily for everyone’s taste buds, Nicki doesn’t procrastinate nor need any excuses. Additionally, this only my interpretation of Nicki’s dietary information.

This week Nicki and I chose to make a Raspberry Granola Bar Surprise and a Blueberry Buckle due to our love of desserts with fruit (similar to Dags’ love for sugar, Tristan’s love of vanilla, and Dubs’ love of estimating). I made two desserts because I am an overachiever (or because my fiancé is a dietitian who likes to bake).

Since Nicki is a dietitian, our desserts usually contain things like whole wheat flour, yogurt instead of sour cream, and apple sauce or fruit preserves instead of oil. These substitutions come with many exceptions, and in these desserts, the exceptions are both butter and canola oil. Butter was needed in the Blueberry Buckle in order to get a proper mouth feel of the crumb topping and to keep the cake heavy. Canola oil was used in the Raspberry Granola Bars in order to make them crispy. Canola oil has a healthy fatty acid profile, has omega 3, and is mild tasting (props to Nicki).

The dessert pictured to the left is the Raspberry Granola Bar Surprise. This was created with whole wheat flour, canola oil, eggs (from Briggs Farm in PA), cinnamon, brown sugar, almond extract, raspberry preserves (also from Briggs Farm), and chocolate chips. The dessert pictured to the right is the Blueberry Buckle. This was created with white sugar (yeah Dags!), all purpose flour, butter, eggs, cinnamon, vanilla extract (yeah Tristan!), and about 1892 blueberries (is this close enough Dubs?). It also has a topping of brown sugar, whole wheat flour, and butter. This is called a buckle because there are so many blueberries and such a heavy crumb topping that the batter buckles in the oven while it bakes.

You’re up Dags. I look forward to some vegan sugary goodness.

-Drew