Friday, October 14, 2011

Our Granola Bars...


Homemade Granola Bars

Homemade Granola!  Yay!  I only wish I had known how to do this years ago!
Here are most of the ingredients that you will need.
2-3 cups of rolled oats(old fashioned)
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower seeds (unsalted)
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/2 cup coconut
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup turbinado sugar or brown sugar
1/3 cup of honey
3 tbs butter ( I use salted butter)
raisins( optional)
chocolate chips ( optional)
Here is some items you will be using to make the granola. Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
large pan
medium pot
Put the oats, seeds, coconut, and wheat germ in your pan.  You are going to put this in the oven to roast a bit.  Stir occasionally for 10 minutes.
If I forgot to list some of these items, here they are!  (I am so easily sidetracked sometimes!)
Sugar
Honey
butter
vanilla extract
cinnamon
When your oat mixture is roasting for about 10 minutes, you need to start melting your butter and sugar and honey in the simmering pot for about 5 minutes.  Put in your salt and cinnamon when all else is melted.  Take it off the burner, and add the vanilla.  Don’t be alarmed at the bubbling sizzle like I was! 

Take out the oat mixture from the oven.  Ooh it’s roasty!
Pour it into a large bowl.  Now pour the hot melty sugar and butter mixture over the oats and etc.  And stir with a spoon until all is covered with your sugary glue!
Here is the point when you will want to add your raisins or other dried fruit, and or also chocolate chips.  About 1/2 cup for each should be good.

I have also roasted almonds and walnuts for my husband and I in a separate batch of granola.  I don’t really like using nuts at all in my home because of the severe peanut allergy that some of my children have.  So I am very extra careful at keeping nuts put way up like a medicine!
After you have mixed all ingredients you can scrape it into a gently oiled 9 by 13 glass pan and press with an oiled spatula.  And hopefully you didn’t turn off the oven because you need to bake this for another 10 to 15 minutes!
When it is almost completely cooled I cut the granola bars either with a knife or the spatula seen in the picture above.
Here is mine fresh out of the oven!  Oh the cinnamon makes it taste so good!  And for the same amount that I pay for 6 bars, I can now make 16-20 bars!  Wow!
Here they are all stacked and ready to consume.
I keep them in an air tight jar.  They have stayed crunchy.  My husband actually takes one or two of them and crushes them in a cereal bowl and pours milk on them and eats that for breakfast some days.
I hope you all enjoy trying to make this granola recipe.  I just put together 3 or 4 different recipes I found.  Some say leave out the butter, some say leave out the sugar, some say cook shorter, some say cook longer.  This is just what worked for me.  Ya’ll be blessed today!

3 comments:

Hannah said...

tum-yummy :)

Unknown said...

mm, those look delicious! i wanna try that!

Heather (JesusChick) said...

Ok that looks waaaayyyyy too good! I'm totally craving some granola now :P