granola bar mixture

A couple of hours before the storm yesterday, I made my homemade granola bars and set them out to cool while I was at our store.  Had no idea I would be home 3 hours early because of a tornado.  Anyway, here’s the recipe below.  They’re much cheaper than buying granola bars in the store.  If you want to make them without the brown sugar, just experiment a little with how much honey you should use as a replacement for the sugar.  In this batch, I added peanuts, which are not listed in the recipe … so just play around with ingredients you like.  They don’t turn out super hard and crunchy like the ones in the grocery and they sometimes crumble a bit.  But they taste so much better when you know you made them yourself.

1/2 cup honey plus 2 tablespoons

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups dried oats

1 cup sunflower seeds (unsalted, shelled)

1 cup flax seeds

1 cup raisins (can replace with other dried fruits)

Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Warm the honey and brown sugar in a pan until melted and add in peanut butter and vanilla extract….stir well with a whisk. Add to dry mixture and mix well.

Press* entire mixture into a (approx) 8 x 10 pan that has been heavily buttered or oiled. Bake in preheated oven at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes.

Allow to cool for about 10 minutes and cut into bars. Do not remove bars. Allow to completely cool (at least an hour) before removing bars from pan. Wrap individually. Keeps about a week to 10 days.

* when I say PRESS the mixture, I mean, do it firmly – really put some weight into it and get the mix compacted down.  It will make for a much more solid bar.

homemade granola bars