Chocolate Energy Breakfast Bars

I usually have yoghurt and cereal for breakfast on weekdays, normally with some raspberries, strawberries or blueberries thrown in. Or, if I'm fresh out of fruit, a teaspoon of jam to make it all sweeter. Maybe a boiled egg on the side.

Lately though, I've been finding myself, more and more often, all out of time. So I thought I’d try something I could make ahead. The answer that came to me: energy bars. Except, unlike the store bought kind, you can make these to have exactly what you want in them, and leave out what you don't. And it turns out - making your own energy bars is easy, I don't know why I’d never done it before. Doing it at night and letting them set in the fridge shaves making breakfast right off my morning routine those extra early days :)

This is one of those recipes that doesn’t require exact quantities. You can put in whatever you like - dried apricots or figs, any variety of nut, nougat, cereal, etc. Remember, they're going to be your energy bars, and you will be the one eating them. I used dark chocolate; it has more antioxidants, less fat, and is supposedly better for you than milk chocolate - although if I were more of a milk chocolate fan, I wouldn't let that stop me. You may even want to lessen the ratio of chocolate to filling; mine came out so chocolatey they resembled a dessert almost more closely than breakfast. No matter, I'm up for chocolate any time, any day. And using too little is tricky too, because you need something to bind your bars together. You'll see it when you do it, it'll be obvious.

Ingredients:
300g dark chocolate

3 handfuls of a mixture consisting of:
- nuts (I used pecan nuts, walnuts and almonds)
- crunchy cereal or muesli
- raisins
- dried cranberries (I really liked these in there! They pack a little more punch than raisins and combined really well with the dark chocolate)

Instructions:
1. Break the chocolate in small pieces and melt au bain marie. (An easy way of doing this is this: take the pieces of chocolate and put them in a bowl. Fill a casserole dish with just boiled (so hot) water, about an inch and a half deep. Place the bowl in the water (so that the water doesn't go over the rim). Now, as the water heats up the bowl and melts the chocolate, just stir regularly until the lot is melted. Voila: done) .

2. Take a sheet of parchment (baking) paper or sturdy aluminium foil and spread the mixture of nuts, cereal and dried fruits on it. Then, pour the chocolate over (evenly, if you can manage it). By that stage, it should look like some variation of this:

3. Now, all you have to do is let it cool down so that the chocolate sets. Wait for this - if you don't, it will stick everywhere and you'll make a big mess, whereas if the mixture is cold it'll come right off the foil/paper. You can speed up the process by putting it in the fridge for a while.

4. When it's set, cut it into bars - I did promise you 'breakfast bars'. Or do what I did - forget about the bars and just break it into chunks, put them in a lunch box and have them on the way to work. Or for those mid-morning cravings. Or just because it's chocolate, it's there, and you can.