If you can make rice krispies treats, you can make granola bars. They’re that easy. I’d been stocking my desk at work with Kashi granola bars but I wanted to try making my own. Again my measurements are imprecise but it’s the ingredients that count. For this recipe, even the ingredients list doesn’t count for much because you can add almost anything you like. Almost… I kinda’ messed these up because I substituted a very important ingredient. Still, it’s tasty and I’ll just have to try again!
- 3 cups of oats
- 1/2 cup of flax seeds
- 1 cup dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, mango, chopped dates)
- 1 cup nuts or seeds (pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, crushed peanuts, almonds)
- 1/2 cup honey, molasses (your preference)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (nutmeg, pumpkin spice mix)
- 3 tablespoons (unsalted) butter
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
You want a decent mixture of nuts and dried fruits for added variety. Also you can control the sweetness depending on your preference. However, you do need to have enough sticky liquids to hold the bars together.
In a large shallow pan, toast oats and any raw nuts in a 300 degree F oven for 15 minutes. Stir every 5 minutes to keep it from burning. Be careful not to burn the nuts. Some of the nuts I got came pre toasted or roasted. I left those out of this cooking process.* Once they’re done, toss together the toasted oats, nuts, and dried fruit in a buttered a mixing bowl.
Melt the sugar, butter, vanilla, salt, spices and honey in a saucepan and pour the syrupy mix over the dry ingredients.
Stir well to combine, then lay out the mixture on a flat pan. I would’ve preferred the flat glass pans but one’s in the freezer holding a lasagna and the other was in the dishwasher.
Take a rolling pin, or two buck chuck and compress the granola. You want them to hold together.
Once cooled, cut them into bars. You can individually wrap them or store them in a sealed container.
*Option: Mix everything together then bake the bars after.
Oops! Generally, substituting ingredients is fine. But with granola bars, it’s necessary to have something very sticky that can bind the ingredients together. In this case, honey or molasses. I didn’t have either so I used maple syrup. Needless to say, maple syrup can’t bind worth shit. So I got a lot of crumbly granola bars and essentially, it works out better as cereal. Now I know, so you know too!
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