Chewy Granola Bars

I have a friend who's daughter has many many food allergies. She had said she would love to try my granola and then mentioned that her daughter loves granola bars. So... I decided to try my hand at granola bars. Personally, I like the chewy granola bars over crunchy. 

Whenever I try something, I check out a whole bunch of recipes, and then tweak it into what I want to make. One thing I have learned from reading recipes on line, is to read the comments!  I have found soooo many recipes where people comment saying that it is an AMAZING recipe.. but they changed this, this, this and that.  I have literally found a few comments where they changed every single ingredient!  .... ... ... 

Anyway, I decided I would just come up with my own recipe and see how it goes. 

First consideration for this particular recipe is that it doesn't have any nuts, corn (including corn syrup), egg, or coconut. Then, I wanted to keep it wheat gluten free.. so no wheat flour.  And of course I want to keep the refined sugar down. 

So.. here is what I came up with:

• 4 cups Old Fashioned Oats
• 1 cup Oat Flour (just grind some oats.. I have a mill.. but you can use a food processor or coffee grinder)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon (I used freshly grated cause I'm all about cinnamon)
• ½ cup butter
• ½ cup apple sauce
• 1 cup honey
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325°

Use a 9x13 pan. I line it with parchment (cause parchment ROCKS) but you can either line it with aluminum foil that you then grease, or just grease the pan. But.. lining it is helpful because you can remove the entire pan of bars in order to slice them easier. 

Mix oats, oat flour, baking soda, and cinnamon in a large bowl.

Melt butter, applesauce, honey and brown sugar in a sauce pan over medium heat. Stir, stir, stir until it JUST starts to bubble, then remove from heat and add in vanilla. 

Pour wet mixture over dry and mix it up really well. Let it sit for 5 or 10 minutes to let it really soak into the oats. If you use quick oats you may not need to do this. 

Fold in any add-ins you would like, dried fruits, nuts, chocolate chips etc. I  took some chocolate I had made and just put it on top of half of the tray to see how that would work. 

Press FIRMLY (when I say firmly I mean STUFF IT IN!) into lined pan. If it isn't packed down well, the bars will end up being crumbly. I take another piece of parchment and put it over then push down with something flat and wide.. or even another pan. (I read one review where a woman took another cookie sheet and STOOD on it.... ... ..yeah that's not gonna happen here)

Anyway.. bake for 18-20 minutes (or until it turns golden brown) You can take it out half way and press again if you like.

I smished it again after I took it out cause it seemed to have fluffed a lot. And then I actually kept smishing as it cooled. 

Let it cool about 10 minutes and cut, then let it cool completely. 

They are nice and chewy! Not crumbly at all!  In fact they are a good consistency that can be shaped a bit. So you can wrap them up in wax paper or something and send it off in a lunch box :)

Granola!

Last night I told my boyfriend that I made granola. He asked "From scratch?" and my reply was "...have you met me?"

Yes, I made granola from scratch yesterday, and today.... I had it for breakfast! It was quite yummy!  

I love that this was a recipe where I needed to also make one of the ingredients :)  I needed oat flour and, I haven't done the jumpy uppy downy happy dance on here yet to share my excitement about my newest acquisition.. but I now have a grain mill!! (jumping up and down clapping hands with excitement)

Personally I like the cluster type of granola that you get in the store. Every time I have had homemade granola, it has been the loose toasted type. But I have always loved that too.... soooo I decided to make them both and mix them!

Granola is one of those fun things you can play with and make it your own. One of those things where you just need to know the basics and you can adjust, add, remove, and enhance all you want. Both in the base cereal part and in the add-ons.  For this batch I used brown sugar and honey, but I am going to try using different mixtures of pure maple syrup, honey, brown sugar. 

I love having a basic granola that is tasty and then adding in whatever fruits I want to.. like a sundae bar. In fact, I am going to create a granola bar that will make morning (or late night ;) creation that much easier. 

Ok.. so in order to make that great cluster chunky kind of granola you will need  to first preheat your oven to 300° (oh and just as a warning.. don't get distracted when you are in the baking/stirring phase.. the browning can go into burning pretty quickly :/  )

• 2 cups quick oats
• 1 ½ cups oat flour
• 2 cups nuts ( I had a mixture of chopped almonds, sliced almonds and soy nuts.. cause that's what I had on hand)
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon ( I like cinnamon)
• ½ cup butter (one stick.. I used sweet cream salted)
• ½ cup brown sugar
• ¼ cup honey (cause.. once again.. it's what I had handy)
• ¼ cup water
• ½ tsp sea salt
• 2 tsp vanilla

Mix the oats, oat flour, nuts and spices into a large bowl.

In a sauce pan, over mediumish heat, melt butter, brown sugar, honey and water.. Stir stir stir  until it just starts to bubble then remove from heat and add in the sea salt and vanilla. 

Pour the wet mix over the dry and mix it up well. 

Spread the mixture onto a cookie sheet in clumps. You can break it up later too.. but may as well start it out in the cluster sized you want. I use parchment paper as a liner to make life that much easier in all things baking. (if you have never used parchment paper.. you have to.. really you do!) 

Bake for about 15 minutes then stir it up and turn it over. Bake another 5-10 and stir again. Repeat this until you have an even golden brown on all sides. This is the step where you don't want to get distracted or you end up with that extra flavor called.. burned. It may still be a bit soft, but it will harden up as it cools so don't go by the crunch factor, go by the color.

This tray went a little further than I would have liked, but it still tastes great :)

Luckily, I had it on the parchment  so I was able to actually remove the entire thing from the hot tray to stop the cooking. 

That's it! You have now achieved your own cluster chunky granola! Now you can add whatever dried fruit you want and enjoy.

I went one more step because I wanted to bulk it up with the loose type granola too. 

For this I actually followed  this basic granola exactly ( I know right!?) .. oh wait, not EXACTLY.. I used flaxseed oil instead of vegetable.

My add-ins have consisted of dried apples (my own of course), raisins, chopped up dates, dried bananas, and craisins. I have some pineapple that needs to go into the dehydrator today and some coconut that I am going to toast up too. 

Have fun with your own creations! Let me know what your favorite granola mix is.