 |
| Walnuts, almonds, dark chocolate, cranberries, raisins, coconut shreds, oats, honey...tempting enough yet? |
Start by getting your 9x13 inch baking pan out, greasing it, and preheating your oven to 350.
Second, create the base of your recipe. In a large mixing bowl, add 2 cups of rolled oats, 1 cup of flour, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 cup brown sugar. The ingredients I just listed are part of the base of your granola bar. If you want to make granola bars exactly like mine, at this step you should also add 1/2 cup of flaxseed meal, 3/4 cup of raisins, 1/3 cup of dried cranberries, 1/2 cup of dried coconut, 1 cup of slightly broken walnuts, 1/3 cup of sliced almonds, 1 cup of dark chocolate chips, and 1/2 cup of broken banana chips. Yes, I added a lot of goodies. Our pantry is pretty much trail mix heaven.
Like I said, throw in whatever sounds good and seems like it would work. If you need ideas and aren't creative, stroll down the granola bar aisle at the grocery store and look at what's available. If you want granola bars but don't want to make them, stroll down the granola bar aisle at the grocery store and take some boxes to the register.
The next step is to mix up all your dry ingredients. Make sure you don't have a clump of 20 raisins because that might not be tasty in a granola bar. I mixed it up with a fork to try to break up the clumps, but maybe you can find some other way that works.
Then, clear a spot in the middle of your dry ingredients. Into the hole, pour one pre-beaten egg, 1/2 cup of veggie oil, 1/2 cup of honey, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.
This next step gets messy in a delightful and frightening way. Roll your sleeves up, wash your hands (you should have already done this, but I don't trust that you already did so I'm telling you to now), stick your hands in the concoction and mix, mix, mix! Hopefully you already remembered to grease your pan, because at this point your hands are covered in oaty yumminess and you need to put your granola bar dough directly into the pan. If you like your granola bars a little thicker like I do, don't spread the dough all the way to both sides of the pan. Rather, plop your dough down on 4/5 of the pan and leave the last 1/5 empty. Yup, it's like magic.
Finally, like your hands off very thoroughly, then wash them, then put your bars in the oven. Cook for anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes, depending on how crunchy you like them. Keep in mind that they will get a LOT harder after they cool down. So, don't cook them til they're rock hard like my abs. I let mine cook for 20 minutes so they'd be nice and chewy.
I got overexcited and tried to eat them within 5 minutes of them coming out of the oven. This was unintelligent because the bar I ate crumbled everywhere. After 10 minutes of taking them out of the oven, I cut the yummies into bars and let them cool. After they cooled down all the way, they actually did nicely form bars. I guess I should have been more patient. Oops. Moral of the story: make these granola bars, let them hang out a good hour so that they cool down, then nom them down.
Sidenote 1: my brother is in Norway right now and said that instead of saying "yum yum," Norwegians say "nom nom." I had a HUGE smile on my face when I learned this and I think a giggle slipped out, even though I was in a computer lab. Go Norge!
Sidenote 2: I guess I was not kidding when I said these granola bars have too much love. If you follow my recipe with all the glorious add-ins and cut the pan into 12 bars, each bar will have about 400 calories. Wow. If you follow the base recipe, each bar has about 250 calories. That seems a little more reasonable. It seems obvious that these have a ton of calories, but I was still surprised. Though these are definitely calorie packed, at least it's not calories from frying or just straight up sugar. Lots of the calories are from very healthy sources that are also providing fiber, vitamins and all that good business. Still, I wouldn't suggest you eat half a pan at once.