Cinnamon apple and raisin oat bars

These bars are one of those recipes that taste like a treat but come together with a fork and a bowl. There is no butter, no sugar and no flour, just mashed banana doing the job that eggs or butter would usually do. Ripe bananas are the secret here. As they sit, their starches turn into sugars and their skins speckle brown, and that is exactly when they mash most easily and add the most natural sweetness. If your bananas are still firm, leave them on the counter for a day or two before you start.

The apples are worth a note too. Leaving the skins on keeps some of the fibre and a little colour in the finished bars, and chopping them finely means they soften into the oats instead of sitting in lumps. Apples are one of the most ordinary fruits in a British or Australian kitchen, yet they hold up well to baking, which is why they turn up in so many old-fashioned flapjack and crumble recipes.

A small tip from years of making things like this: once the mixture is in the tin, press it down firmly with the back of a spoon or a square of baking paper. A loose layer will crumble when you cut it, and a packed one holds together in your lunchbox. Let the tray cool completely before you slice, even though it is tempting to go in while it is warm. The bars firm up as they cool and the portions come out clean.

To store them, keep the cut bars in an airtight tin at room temperature for a few days, or put them in the fridge if your kitchen runs warm. They also freeze well. Wrap each bar separately, and you can pull one out the night before or let it thaw in your bag by lunchtime. They make a handy grab-and-go breakfast on busy mornings.

For something more filling, serve a bar alongside a bowl of plain Greek yoghurt, or crumble one over a pot of stewed rhubarb. If you want a warm breakfast on a cold morning, the Warm Apple Oat Bowl with Cinnamon follows the same flavours in porridge form. Anyone who enjoys the crunch of these bars might also like the Maple Cinnamon Nut Granola, which brings the same spice and seeds to a breakfast you can scoop straight from the jar.

A cup of tea or coffee with one of these bars makes a good mid-morning pause, and they are just as happy on a picnic blanket as on a desk. Keep a tin of them somewhere easy to reach and they will disappear faster than you expect.