And The Beat Goes On…

Here we are again, another week of quarantine. This week, our girls officially started school online and thankfully that is going very smoothly for us. I know we are lucky that our girls can work online with very little assistance from us.

Having a routine again is helping in many ways. We all get up at a decent time and now have something to do that helps make life feel a little more “normal.” We are not sure if this is how we will finish out the school year, but for now, the system is working.

With all of us at home, we are definitely snacking more. While the cakes and cream puffs were fun for awhile, we cannot continue to eat like that for obvious reasons.

When we were leaving the house on a regular basis, I would send granola bars as healthy snacks. I figured having some homemade bars on hand would be a fun, healthy treat, so I set out to make some this week.

Having recently purchased ginormous bags of sliced almonds and dried cranberries at Costco, these items would play a key role in my bars. I poked around the Internet to find a good recipe for granola bars that would stay chewy.

Using a fiber rich mix of oats, nuts, and dried fruits, you can easily make granola bars at home that will rival any packaged bars on the market.

More than one recipe I came across used brown rice syrup for helping to hold things together and keeping the bars soft. That is certainly not an ingredient I keep on hand, so I opted for using coconut oil and honey instead.

You can use any combination of nuts and dried fruit, but I love the combination of cranberries and almonds, especially if you throw chocolate in the mix as well.

Many recipes I found made enough to fill an 8×8 pan. That seems hardly worth the effort, when it would yield maybe 6-8 bars. So the first adaptation I chose to make was to double the amount of everything. In this case, more is definitely more.

I started with some pretty basic ingredients, old fashioned oats, almonds, pecans, cranberries and mini chocolate chips. I added a little secret ingredient with some toasted quinoa. This adds texture and crunch, but also adds a bit more protein.

Finely chopping the oats with some of the nuts in a food processor helps to hold things together. You can then mix in the larger pieces, like the berries, chocolate chips and more roughly cut nuts.

To bind it all together you heat up a mixture of honey, coconut oil and a bit of kosher salt. Bring that to a nice bubble and heat until it begins to thicken a bit and get foamy. Then you add a splash of vanilla extract and pour that all over the dry mix.

I chose to add the mini chocolate chips in 2 stages. Half go in while mixing the heated sauce and dry ingredients, while half are reserved for topping the bars at the end. When mixing the chocolate in with the warm sauce, you add chocolate all the way through when the chips begin to melt.

I chose to press my bars into a 9×13″ pan. By lining the pan with aluminum foil first, you can make removing and cutting the finished bars a lot easier. If you use the bottom of a glass or mason jar coated with cooking spray, you can evenly press firmly, assuring the mixture melds together and bonds into bars.

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, then remove the foil and place on the counter to cut. I chose to cut rectangular bars, but you can cut them into smaller squares as well.

I found that the bottom of my bars were a little slippery, which I am assuming is from the coconut oil. This led me to wonder if I could press them into the aluminum covered pan without the added layer of cooking spray on the foil. I will experiment with the next batch and let you know. But the bottoms are not a problem, especially if you hold the bars on the sides while devouring them.

The granola bars should be stored in the refrigerator, or you can even choose to freeze them for future use. If we are ever allowed to wander freely again and you would like to take them on the go, simply wrap them individually in some plastic wrap.

By doubling the ingredients, I made 15 bars. We have already eaten almost half of them. I do not feel badly about that at all, as they are laced with nuts and fruit and pack a protein punch.

I will happily make more and plan to play with the mix-ins as well. You can switch up the nuts, add different dried fruits, dried coconut, or even mini M&Ms, whatever sounds good to you.

I hope you are all staying safe and sane and I would love to hear what you are eating while cooped up.