Carrot and Oat bar - baking fail

(Goblin is 30 months)

Last week I spotted Growing Together's 'Carrot Cake bars' post at Happy Whimsical Hearts baking link up (see button below). I decided I had to try them with Goblin. The recipe comes from The Little Things  and there is a Christmas bar variation too.
Normally I would offer the UK measurements but Hublet has bought us an actual 'cup' measurer so I just used that (Sorry). So you need

1 cup of oats 

1/2 cup of grated carrot (which equates to two medium carrots)

2 tablespoons of raisins 

2 table spoons of grated coconut

1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon

a pinch of salt

honey (TLT say to taste but we ended up using about 4 tablespoons)

water - we used about 1 cup

I always try and enable Goblin to participate as much as possible in any cooking we do. So I decided to try and make the carrots safe for Goblin to grate. And once I'd stopped sniggering and dragged my mind out of the gutter I gave Goblin his carrot with cardboard knuckle guard.

Our new grater is really sharp and I was a bit worried that Goblin would grate off his fingers, but even with the guard he just found grating too difficult. So I ended up doing most of it.

Goblin did manage to help me measure the ingredients though. Its much easier with a cup measure than having to use the scales. We just put them all in the bowl at once. I realised I'd got rock salt rather than table salt out of the cupboard so we just skipped that ingredient.
The recipe said to add water until the mixture had a thick batter consistency but this never happened. I think it may have been because I was using the cheapest oats in the world.

To get it to stick together we ended up using a ton of honey - somewhat undermining the whole 'health' aspect of these bars. The mixture fitted perfectly in a 12 inch cake tin.

As per the instructions we put it in the oven for 25 minutes on 190C (gas mark 5, 375F). It was quite hard to tell whether it was cooked because it was still soft when we took it out of the oven. I turned it out onto a plate and left it to cool. Then I cut it into triangles.

Well they look really yummy but they did need salt (so much for thinking I could just skip that ingredient). The flavour was nice but the texture was quite odd - a bit slimy - like baked porridge (which is exactly what it is - and you have to remember again that I used very cheap oats).
Goblin was not impressed. He took one mouthful, gagged and refused to try any more. Hublet taunted me by explaining that the reason his treats taste so nice is
"because of the sheer quantity of sugar and butter I use, you made the mistake of using carrots and oats!"

So once again I have had a bit of a cooking fail (although I can't stop eating the stuff myself). But if any of you follow this blog regularly you will probably already know that Hublet is the cook in our house and most of my attempts at cooking take a downward turn. I'm pretty sure the quality of the oats had a significant effect on the results so please go visit The Little Things  and learn from a proper cook and hopefully yours will turn out better than mine.

Despite the results I'm sharing this with