Ever since he posted the pseudo-recipe, I've been wanting to try to make my own implementation of Ran's nutbars. This afternoon, I made my first attempt.

Yesterday, as usual, I stopped by Open Harvest during my bike journey, where I procured ingredients. As suggested by Ran's recipe, I obtained a bunch of cashews and almonds, and also threw in a nice bag of walnuts for good measure. For my sweetener base, I decided to go with blackstrap molasses. I also bought a bag of nice plump organic raisins to throw into the mix. Maybe I'll do it with maple syrup and dates when I'm rich. :)

I used a cutting board and knife to chop several piles of nuts into tiny pieces and threw them into a bowl. Ran's instructions were vague on certain points, so I sort of just improvised. (Hah! Just like my recipes. "I never measure." That's the way to go.)

Since he said warming the nuts before mixing them helps make it easier to work with, I put the oven on a low temperature and tossed the whole bowl (made of metal) in there for a few minutes. That got them warm, although I'm not convinced it made much of a difference in mixing them for me.

Then, the fun part. I dumped a bunch of molasses in, and got my hands messy. Very messy. Then the raisins. (I had considered trying to grind them up into the sweetener mix like Ran does with figs, but that seemed like a pain, and I liked the idea of having whole raisins in there, so I just used them "as is".)

For my "powdery stuff", I used a bag of bulk labeled "7-grain cereal", which contained a bunch of tiny particles. It seemed to work ok, although the bits were pretty rough and hard, so I think I'll use something different next time. (Maybe it was intended to be cooked with water?)

At this point, according to Ran's design, you flatten the stuff out on wax paper, cut it up into bars, and let it dry. I could now see why he mixes something into the sweetener to thicken it up. My mixture, while sticky individually, crumbled apart very easily. I didn't see how it was all going to hold together into anything resembling "bars", and adding more molasses (even if I had had more) wouldn't have helped either, because it was too runny.

Regardless of the consistency, the messy stuff tasted absolutely delicious.

Since I had enough to make several pans, I decided to experiment a bit. The first pan, I warmed up in the oven just a little while, maybe 5 minutes. I wasn't sure what the wax paper on the pan would do if left heating in the oven, so I took it out pretty quickly.

I lifted the whole thing off the pan by grabbing the edges of the paper, "cut" the crumbly goop into bar-sized portions, and decided to see what would happen if I left it to dry for a day or so.

Even though Ran's recipe doesn't call for it, I wanted to see what would happen if I actually roasted a pan full of the stuff in the oven for a longer period of time. For the second pan, I didn't use wax paper. I sprayed some cooking oil on the pan, spread the mix directly on top of it, and put it in the oven at around 300 F for a half hour.

While that baked, I had just enough to try yet a third variation. I added the rest of my powdery grain to the remainder to make it less sticky, and spread it out on wax paper without heating it at all. I don't think it will work as bars, but it might make an interesting granola-like substance.

When I took the baked batch out of the oven, it actually stuck together almost like real bars! The raisins had puffed up into big balls, and everything had a nice crunchy texture, and a toasty flavor around the edges. I declared the fully roasted batch to be by far the best. (Unless the drying process on the others turns out a lot better than I think it will.)

So I guess even though I tried to make Ran's recipe, I ended up making my own offshoot version, which probably don't taste much like his at all. But I like what I've got for a first attempt, and I plan to test more variations on it in the future.