Homemade granola bars - 180 calories each!

By jenn0319

I have attempted to make granola bars about 15 times! They NEVER work out and I end up with just granola - they never stick together. Fast forward my brother in law gave me this recipe and it's the last one I'll ever use!

Ingredients

• 7 cups (21 oz.) old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil (I used grapeseed oil)
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1.5 cups of almonds, pecans or walnuts (I used pecans)
• 3/4 cup honey
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Details

Preparation time 15mins
Cooking time 40mins
Adapted from slim-shoppin.com

Preparation

Step 1

The first thing you do is add the oats, oil and salt. Place that on a cookie sheet covered in foil (i did spray a little cooking spray on the foil first). Bake that for about 30 minutes at 375 degrees.

Stir the oats every 10 minutes, making sure they aren't getting too brown, you want these toasted.

Remove the oats from the pan and lower the temperature of the oven to 300.

*wait at least 15 minutes for your oven to get cooler, otherwise they will brown too fast.

Place the nuts in a food processor and pulse for about 10 1-second pulses. Take half the nuts out and mix the rest until they are ground.

*I just chopped half with a knife and blended the rest in a blender

Now in a medium pot add the honey and brown sugar and cook on low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally until all the sugar has dissolved.

Remove from heat, add the vanilla and cinnamon and set aside.

Now the fun begins! Adding all these components together. Add the toasted oats in a big bowl, with the chopped nuts, the finely ground nuts, and the honey/brown sugar mixture.

Stir until everything is combined and spread on a jelly roll pan covered in foil (spray the pan with cooking spray first.

Here is the step that I think made them work. You press down the mixture with a spatula dipped in water (so it doesn't stick to the bars) and press down as hard as you can to make it tight and compact. I actually ended up spraying another piece of foil and put that on top to press down. I even had my son do it since he had better leverage than I did.

Bake at 300 degrees for 45-50 minutes. Depending on your oven check it at 35 minutes - if it is getting too brown, lower the temp or just take it out.

Let cool on the sheet for 10 minutes.

Then just remove the bars from the pan and place on a cutting board. And voila - you will have pretty bars! If you cut them into 36 bars - they are approximately 180 calories each