Before you begin, take a moment to watch the helpful Sweet Treat Maple Cream Bars recipe video and have a look at the process photos in the recipe post.

Gather all your ingredients and baking tools and preheat your oven to 350°F. Line your baking dish (13 x 9 inches) with unbleached parchment paper. Ideally, 2 sheets, one in each direction covering your whole dish with a little extra on each side, folded over. The extra paper will facilitate removing the cooled bars from the baking dish. Start boiling some water for the base crust.

Prepare the sunflower seed flour by grinding 84 g of organic raw sunflower seeds (a little less than 1 cup) in a small blender or spice grinder. Don’t blend too long, as you might create seed butter. No need to sift the flour. Set aside.

Measure all your dry ingredients for the base crust and prepare all your mix-ins. Pan-roasting the mix-in seeds or nuts is optional, but if you have a few extra minutes, toasting them in a dry pan for a few minutes on low to medium heat is wonderful. Let them cool before chopping. You can even toast the unsweetened shredded coconut.

To make the base crust, combine the hot water and flaxseed meal in a medium bowl and whisk. Add the remaining base crust ingredients and mix well until combined into a smooth, softer dough. Transfer the crust mixture to the parchment-lined baking dish. Press down with a spoon or soft spatula until the mixture is evenly spread in the dish. Bake for 20 minutes on the middle rack. Once ready, remove the baking dish from the oven and set it aside to cool for a few minutes. Do not remove the crust from the pan.

While the crust is baking, find a larger pot or stainless steel bowl and fill the bottom with ice cubes and set it aside. Start boiling the 2 cups of maple syrup in a medium saucepan on medium to low heat. Have your digital thermometer close by and stay beside the stove while your maple syrup is boiling, do not mix it. If the syrup rises and is too close to the top edge of your pot, reduce the heat, as you don’t want it to boil over. After 5 minutes, check the temperature. Turn off the heat as soon as it reaches 235°F. In total, the boiling process might take around 10 minutes. Once ready, place the pot with maple syrup into the bowl with ice cubes. This will help the syrup to cool faster. Once it reaches 95-90°F, give the syrup a few quick stirs with the wooden spoon. Doing so will lighten up the colour of the thick syrup to a golden caramel colour. Add the filling ingredients (flaxseed meal, coconut cream, vanilla extract) with the mix-ins of your choice. Start with 2 cups of mix-ins and only add more if necessary to create the right consistency. Your mixture might be thicker, and that’s ok. But if it is too thin, consider adding more mix-ins. More of the same or different mix-ins.

Transfer the filling mixture to the base crust and spread evenly. Sprinkle some unsweetened shredded coconut or more seeds to decorate the top if you wish, and bake on the center rack for 30 minutes (up to 35 to 40 minutes). TIP: place a baking sheet under your baking dish or on the bottom rack to catch potential drippage. The edges will start to bubble and get darker when it’s time to consider removing the bars from the oven. If the center of the filling is too wobbly and doesn’t look set, leave it for longer but consider covering the side edges to prevent overbaking. Or loosely place a sheet of parchment paper on the top of the whole dish to encourage the center to bake faster. Try not to bake for more than 40 minutes, as the sweet syrup on the edges will transform into a dryer, crumblier maple sugar.

Cool the bars completely in the baking dish, then refrigerate. You can refrigerate the bars (unsliced) directly in the baking dish, covered. Best served cooled and even refrigerated. Slice the bars before serving, especially if your filling is still a bit gooey. Once at room temperature, the filling will be softer if your bars have fewer mix-ins. Keeps in the refrigerator for up to 7 days. Slice and freeze leftover bars for up to 2 months in a deep freezer stored in an air-tight container. TIP: layer sliced bars between sheets of parchment paper to prevent sticking. Enjoy!