Allergy Friendly, Vegan “Boo”-Berry Bars

Class parties and potlucks – a Food Allergy Family’s Nightmare. Or is It?

The answer to that is really going to depend on the level of sensitivity you’re dealing with. For our family, we do not have contact or airborne allergies. Kiddo is also nine so she’s old enough to know better when it comes to eating things. If there’s no package, she won’t eat it. We also talk about being aware of cross contact. Buffets are notorious breeding grounds for contamination. It’s important to me that she understands that and approaches them with appropriate caution.

Let’s talk about that for a second. Even though we don’t deal with airborne or contact allergies, buffets and potlucks are a risky situation. I’m going to use my daughter’s avocado allergy as an example. Guacamole is a very common item to find at parties. Dips also happen to be one of the messier foods.

Imagine this: someone goes through the food line and grabs the little spoon in the guacamole. The spoon was resting deep in the dish and some dip had made it’s way to the handle. No big deal, except now that person has it on their hands and they go grab the next utensil for the food that might otherwise be safe for my daughter. Now her allergen is all over the handle and she gets it on her hands. Not knowing what it was, she grabs a napkin and wipes it off before continuing on and eventually sitting down with some safe for her food and chips.

Oh, but those chips are finger foods! So the same hand that touched the guacamole is now being used to touch and eat her chips leading to accidental consumption of her allergen.

See where I’m going here? And don’t get me started on how people touch the utensils to other food on their plate and put it right back in the serving dish. If you don’t live with food allergies, these things will never cross your mind. I don’t blame you for that, but it’s why I continue to put the message out there and hopefully you find it educational whether you have allergies or not.

I’ll share an actual story. Over the summer we were at a potluck. I did all the things to keep us safe and we had a great time! I had brought a smallish, but still shareable size of chips that are safe for our family. They didn’t get opened during the potluck and I had grabbed them as we were leaving.

Everyone was packing up and I was just waiting for my daughter to finish up in the bathroom before we made the two and a half hour trek back home. It was getting close to dinner time and people were getting snacky again. There was still some nuts, veggies and fruits on the counter that people were grazing on. These foods weren’t safe for me or Kiddo, so I opened the bag of chips for us to eat.

Again, this was a smaller bag so I just opened it and the two of us were eating out of it. Then here comes one of our family members and goes, “Oh! That looks good!” and sticks her hand in the bag to get a handful.

Not a big deal, right? I’m open for sharing! However, she had just been eating carrots and mixed nuts not even one minute before. She didn’t even use a napkin (though that wouldn’t have been enough anyway) before reaching into our safe food. Nuts and carrots are major allergens for us.

Obviously at this point whatever was left in the bag was no longer safe for us.

Did she have bad intentions? No! Absolutely not. Was she thinking like an allergy family? No! Absolutely not. And that’s why it’s important that we take the steps that we do.

For gatherings involving food I will always make a dish with plenty to share. That’s expected, but here’s the twist. I keep a portion out of the main container for Kiddo and I to eat. That way we have a separated container free from cross contamination.

I also try to find out some of what is being served. I will do what I can to bring the same items for us, packaged separately, so we can be eating as close to the same things as possible. It’s ok if we eat something different, but part of gatherings is sharing a meal together and it can be nice to share in the same things.

The other thing I do is make sure whatever I’m bringing to share is absolutely amazing. People often think that food made for those with allergies or restrictions is going to taste like cardboard. Don’t get me wrong, some of it legit does! So whenever I’m bringing a dish to share, I always make sure it tastes amazing. It’s just another way to help breakdown that divide for those with restrictions. It educates people that we do eat real, delicious food. It just needs to be free from a few (or in our case, over a dozen) things.

This brings me to today’s recipe. We had my daughter’s Halloween party this week at her dance studio and over the summer I was already getting requests from parents to bring this treat! In honor of the holiday I gave them a little makeover and a new name: “Boo”-berry Bars.

These tasty little morsels are free from most of the major allergens and are vegan. The crust is perfectly crumbly and the filling is thick and sweet. Bonus: They travel beautifully!

Let’s Get Baking!

Ingredients:

-          1 ½ Cups Oat flour (or oats, see my notes) – GF if necessary

-          1 Cup Oats - GF if necessary

-          ½ Cup Coconut sugar or brown sugar

-          ½ tsp Cinnamon

-          ¼ tsp Baking soda

-          ¼ tsp Salt

-          8 TBS Butter, melted (I use Country Crock Plant Based Butter sticks to keep it vegan)

-          1 tsp Vanilla

-          2 ½ Heaping cups Frozen blueberries

-          3 TBS Pure maple syrup

-          1 TBS Corn starch

Directions:

The first thing we are going to do is make the crust and topping crumble. I have a hard time finding gluten free oat flour in stores near me, so I use Bob’s Red Mill GF Oats to make my own. It’s really easy. I just take my oats and put them in my Vitamix and blitz it for a couple minutes until it’s fairly fine.

For this recipe, the measurements are very forgiving so for the flour I use a 1:1 oat ratio. Just a side note, this doesn’t work for every recipe. Some will require a very fine flour and I haven’t quite been able to achieve that on my own.

After you’ve got your oat flour situated, add it to a bowl along with your oats, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Give everything a good stir, then you can add your vanilla and melted butter.

Just a friendly reminder, this is a crumble, not a dough. It’s going to be a pretty dry mixture. Do what you can to get the wet ingredients mixed in with a spoon, but it’s kind of inevitable you’re going to have to get your hands in there. Wash them up and go confidently! Squeeze and mix those ingredients until you can’t see any dry bits.

For this next part, you have options. You can use a baking dish or a square cake pan to make these, or you can make them in a muffin tin. Either way, make sure you are using either parchment paper or muffin liners in your pan. The filling will be gooey and sticky. If it’s directly touching your pan there’s a greater chance it will burn and stick to it.

I chose to do a muffin tin this time around and I loved it because I was able to include festive liners to give it a little extra oomph.

Once you have your pan ready to go, take some of the mixture and press it into the pan. You’re likely going to use a little more than half of it for the bottom. Really press it down in there making sure to get into any corners. You don’t need this layer to be super thick, but you want it thick enough to hold the filling without breaking. Take a look at my finished pictures to see what I mean in terms of layer ratios.

Once that’s done, go ahead and set it aside. It’s time to make the filling! This only takes a few minutes, so it’s also a good time to preheat your oven to 350f.

Start by adding your blueberries into a sauce pan on medium heat. While those start to heat up, grab your syrup and cornstarch. I used Matters Farm syrup for a reason. They are a small farm with a high quality product. Syrup flavor can vary greatly depending on how it’s made but their product always leaves me with a great tasting end result.

Instead of adding the syrup and cornstarch right into the pan, we are going to mix those in their own bowl to make a slurry. It’s tempting to add them right in, but the cornstarch will clump up and won’t do it’s job properly. By adding them together, you end up with a smooth liquid thickener. That’s what we want. There’s just an added bonus that the liquid we used will provide some extra sweetness to the filling.

After they are mixed, you can add them to the blueberries which should be starting to cook down a little. Mix everything together and continue to cook until the berries are thawed enough to mash.

Using a potato masher or the back of a spoon, gently mash some of the blueberries. We aren’t trying to make a puree here, so be careful not to do too many. We still want some whole berries in the filling.

Once that’s done, stir it up and reduce the heat to low. Keep stirring at this point because it will burn quickly if left unattended. Give it 3-5 minutes and you should notice the mixture begin to thicken. Remember, this is still going to go in the oven and then be chilled both of which will help it firm up further.

Alrighty, so now it’s time to go back and top the crust with the filling. Go ahead and even it out if you’re using a baking dish, and if you’re doing a muffin tin make sure there’s a nice layer, but don’t over fill them. This dish won’t rise, but you do need room for the topping.

Which brings us to the next step. That the leftover crust mixture and crumble it over the filling. Go ahead and be generous and use up the rest of the mix. Gently pat down the topping to make sure it sticks to the filling.

It’s ready for the oven! Pop it in for 30 minutes if you did a larger pan, and 15 minutes for a muffin tin.

When they are done, let them cool completely, 1-2 hours, and then transfer to the fridge for an hour or two (or longer). When you pull them out of the fridge you should have a jellied filling and a firm crust base.

These are ready to serve! Because I was bringing these to a party, I towered them up on a nice plate and then added some cute Halloween themed tooth picks to give it a little more flare. Allergy kids are used to having the small, plain thing at the table so anytime I can make something extra fancy looking or fun, I do my best to make it happen!

I wish I had gotten a photo of the cute display at the party, but by the time I got back there, only three bars were left! I did get some nice text messages and thank yous from some of the parents. Some were from people without restrictions, some were messages from kids with intolerances that were so happy to have an option to grab. This brought me so much joy because, after all, inclusion was my joy. A delicious treat that everyone can love!

What do you think? Would you make these? I’d love to know what you think in the comments!