Chocolate Almond Oat Bars

I've kept a little secret from you for much too long. A year has passed, over a hundred recipes have been shared, and still I haven't said a word. It's about time I confess. If you've been following for awhile, you may have even picked up on it. Can you guess what it is?

I'm allergic to tree nuts.

I'll admit, it's a little (a lot) ironic for a baker. Tree nuts are an anchor for most bakers. They are the backbone to many, many delicious baked goods. Yet, this secret world of nuts will be forever lost on me. Hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans, macadamia nuts, cashews—I will never know their unique flavors. No sticky, gooey pecan pie at Thanksgiving. No rich, moist carrot cakes or warm banana bread sprinkled with walnuts. Perhaps most devastating of all, I will never get to enjoy a thick spread of nutella on a warm piece of toast (well, not unless I want to end up in the emergency room).

Now that's a real shame.

I have come to terms with this over the years. It wasn't hard. To some extent, you can't miss what you've never had. I can dream about hazelnut crusts, nutella brownies, or white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, especially when other food bloggers flaunt these beautiful photos in my face, but I can't imagine these tastes so they become the stuff of far off dreams. Occasionally, I will smell a jar of nutella and become wistful, but that's as tragic as my story gets.

Also, that's a little weird, isn't it? Perhaps that's one confession too far...

Now that I've shared this not-so-classified information, you're probably wondering why on earth I just made chocolate almond oat bars. I'd wonder, too. For some unknown (but miraculously delicious) reason, I am not allergic to almonds, despite the fact that I am deathly allergic to the other tree nuts. My reasoning is that almonds are the most mild of the tree nuts and are more related to fruits (like the peach) than to the other tree nuts. In fact, almonds grown from undomesticated almond trees actually have small amounts of cyanide in them just like peach pits. Regardless, I don't plan to question my almond invincibility. I wouldn't want to jinx it.

Confessing my tree nut allergy isn't going to change anything around here. I fully intend to keep sharing my love for chocolate and decadent desserts. Just don't come looking to me for a recipe for pistachio pudding.

These Chocolate Almond Oat Bars are the very definition of addictive. They are soft, gooey, and I-can't-stop-eating-them-please-hide-them-from-me delicious. I was inspired to make these from the Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies I made recently. The combination of oats, chocolate, and almonds in the cookie was so uniquely delicious, I wanted to try out the medley with another dessert. These do not disappoint. As several of my taste testers said, "These are good. Too good."

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Cereal and Milk Bars

My sister loved these Brown Butter Rice Krispie Bars so much I made them twice in one weekend. Each time the batch didn't last more than 18 hours sitting on my kitchen counter. Either no one in my family has any self-restraint or these actually are addictive, delicious, little bars.

I'm going to go with the latter.

After so much success with those browned butter bars, I thought I would try my hand with something along a similar vein—cereal and milk bars. I've seen this idea in the stores but I can't quite bring myself to buy them (mainly because they are stuffed with preservatives and still taste stale). I figured making these myself couldn't be too hard (after all, they are very similar to rice krispie bars), so I decided to give them a try.

I chose to use multi-grain cheerios because these are a favorite in my household. I figured I'm adding enough sugar with the marshmallows so using a healthier cereal would keep these bars from popping my shirt buttons. Though, I imagine a brightly colored cereal would make these look irresistible.

This recipe is so diverse because you can honestly use any cereal of your choosing. The bars have a chewy and crunchy texture. The browned butter gives them a subtle nutty flavor with a greater depth of flavor. The milk glaze gives them more of a "bowl full of cereal" quality to them. If you like rice krispie bars, these are for you.

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