Homemade Granola Bars

Homemade Granola Bars

One cloudy, blustery day, I had a sudden craving for something sweet, crunchy, chewy, delicious...& so forth, I stumbled upon this recipe and knew I just had to give them a try! I tweaked the recipe a bit to fit the ingredients I had on hand, but they still turned out finger-lickin' good!

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

1/2 cup coconut sugar
1 1/2 cups honey

 1/3 cup coconut oil 

 1/4 tsp. fine sea salt 

 1 cup peanut butter (or any nut butter that you desire)

 2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 cups crisped rice cereal (I used Quinoa Crispies)

 2 2/3 cups old fashioned oats
2/3 cups flax seeds
1/2 – 1 cup chocolate chips

Start out by melting your, honey, coconut sugar, coconut oil, and nut butter together. Once you take it off the heat, mix in your vanilla.

Mix together your quinoa crispies, oats, flax seeds, and salt.

Pour in your wet mixture and mix until it's well combined.

Have a set of identical-pans ready, along with two pieces of wax paper to fit them.

Dump mixture onto one of your wax-paper-lined pans, and flatten as best you can with your hands.

Place the other piece of wax paper over the top.

Then set your other pan on-top of that pan, and either press it down with your hands, or you can use a rolling pin. I did both. ; ) The reason for this step is to smoosh all your granola together and further flatten them out.

It should look something like this when you're done. 

If you are fortunate enough to have mini-chocolate-chips, add those now and repeat above step to push the chips into the dough. Or if you are not fortunate enough to have mini chips, then you could throw some regular sized chocolate chips in the blender and make chocolate flour and sprinkle that on-top. *ahem* By the way, I think I'm going to start a business in chocolate flour. 

Now you'll want to cover your pan and stick it in the refrigerator for several hours to chill completely.

Once chilled, cut into bars.

Now, I have to do some bragging on these lil' bars. Usually when I make something that is healthy, raw (or no-bake), or whatever the guys aren't generally too excited about them. They will taste them (because I make them...), but they don't absolutely love them. Much to my grief!

BUT, that is not the case with these!

I made the guys try them...and...they loved them 

Like so much that they (Cim in particular) actually dug through the refrigerator looking for them, and then proceeded to wolf several down.   

Oh, and don't worry if you have a few crumble..they are still delicious eaten as is, or they could even be used as cereal..just add milk!

See this

fortress

of

granola bars? We demolished, catapulted, and further proceeded to bombarded.... another way of saying it is, we ate all of them (we = meaning all three of us..) in less than two days. *ahem* We might have liked them just a scosh.

Recipe courtesy of:

 http://happymoneysaver.com/no-bake-homemade-chewy-granola-bars/

Blessings - 

~ Aspen