Sesame brittle energy bars

I’ve got a tough job tomorrow. I’ve got to dig my flat out from under the rubble. That’ll take some positive energy. I could use some to lift my spirits, too, since I’ve been in a bit of a sour mood lately. And now I’ve started sneezing 🙁 When I was getting ready to make hamburger buns, I bought quite a lot of sesame seeds. So now seems the perfect time to use them up.

I really like sesame snaps, and they’re exceptionally easy to make at home. I decided to jazz mine up with dried fruit because I’ve had dried apricots and raisins hanging around since my parents came to visit and I haven’t found much of a use for them. Come to think of it, my parents’ last visit was a while ago, and I haven’t the faintest idea why they brought that dried fruit.

I know, really, that these “bars” are pure evil. They taste good, so you want to eat them (I’ve actually eaten some already today. Not a ridiculous amount, but still). Plus, and this probably has something to do with the first point, they’ve got three tipper lorries’ worth of sugar in them. Calories? Kilocalories? No, these things have teracalories. Still, it’s long been common knowledge that sugar does wonders for your mood. And I’ve been a bit of a wreck since yesterday. A complete wreck. It probably shows in these posts, too. It annoys me that I’m draining the life out of them. So I’m hoping these sesame snaps will bring out my inner domestic god (tomorrow’s cleaning) and get those primitive creative juices flowing again. Fingers crossed.

And I promise I absolutely won’t eat them all myself. I really do promise. Besides, I tried them today and there’s only so much you can eat. They’re frighteningly sweet.

At a glance:

Prep time: 25 minutes (caramel takes its time)

Cooling time: about an hour

Serves: lots of people

How many calories? Pure calories, thousands of teracalories

Ingredients for sesame snaps with a few extras:

• 3/4 of a glass of cane sugar
• 1/4 of a glass of white sugar
• a glass of sesame seeds
• 4 tablespoons of water
• 15 dried apricots
• half a glass of raisins
• 2 tablespoons of honey

The recipe (everything’s going to get sticky):

First I made the caramel. I put the sugar (white and cane) and 4 tablespoons of warm water in a saucepan and heated it over a low “flame” (for me that’s 2 on a scale of 1–10). Caramel takes quite a while, so meanwhile I got the other ingredients ready: cut the apricots into fine strips, rinsed the raisins with warm water and drained them, and measured out a glass of sesame seeds. I also got two large sheets of baking paper ready.

When the sugar started to caramelise (in other words, once it was liquid), I took it off the “heat” and added 2 tablespoons of honey. I stirred it in and tipped in all the other ingredients. Gave everything a really thorough mix. Once the caramel mixture was well combined, I poured it onto the baking paper. I laid the other sheet on top and pressed down firmly to flatten it. I ended up with an almost round slab (hence all the uneven “bars”), about 5 millimetres thick.

I set it aside to cool. When it was still warm but no longer hot, I peeled off the top sheet of paper and cut the slab into smaller pieces. Then I left them to cool again. After about an hour you can enjoy your very own homemade sesame and dried fruit snaps. Enjoy!