I’ve been making granola bars for snacking on our morning dog walks. They’re surprisingly easy to make and quite a nice consistency, not as crumbly as I’d feared.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Use an 8×8 inch or 9×9 inch baking pan and cut a strip of parchment paper as wide as the pan and longer than the pan, enough so it hangs over both edges, this will come in handy later. Lightly grease the pan and the parchment paper.
In a large bowl, mix together all this stuff:
1/2 cup oat flour (to make this you just put oats thru food processor for a minute or two)
1-1/2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1 cup extruded dates, chopped in food processor
2/3 cups raisins
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup peanuts, crushed in food processor (measure first, then chop)
3/4 cup pumpkin seeds
3/4 cup slivered almonds
(you can switch up the nuts and seeds and berries, basically anything seems to work as long as you keep the total quantity about the same)
Then, in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, mix together all this stuff:
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp butter
2 tbsp molasses
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
2 tbsp water
Pour the sauce over the oat mixture and stir everything until it’s thoroughly mixed. Pour it into the baking pan and use the back of a spoon to really smush it in, making one big flat compact block. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 mins. Then cool in the pan for a while (set it on a wire rack to cool, if you have one), then pull on the parchment paper to lift out the whole block and set paper and granola chunk on a cooling rack for a while longer. At first it will be soft and crumbly, so let it sit until it’s entirely cool and sets up firmly. Then use a sharp knife to slice it into bars! I like to use smallish bars, if they’re big they can be kind of hard to bite.
UPDATE: made several batches in the winter and they held together nicely, but once we got into humid springtime weather they started getting sticky and crumbly. i think this recipe only works in the wintertime.