Granola Bars

Cooking Implements

• Knife
• Baking pan
• Parchment paper
• Food processor
• Spoon for mixing
• Medium-size mixing bowl
• Something with a flat surface to press with

Ingredients

• 1½ cup oats (any processed oats like rolled or steel-cut or quick should work)
• 1 cup pumpkin or sunflower seeds
• 1¼ cup pitted dates, raisins, cranberries or other dried fruit
• ¼ cup maple syrup (or other sweet syrup)
• ¼ cup peanut butter (or seed butter)
• 3 tablespoons of poppy, sesame, flax, or chia seeds, and/or coconut flakes

Instructions

• Put the 1¼ cup of dried fruits into the food processor and process down into small pieces
• Add the 1½ cup of oats (and the larger seeds, if used) to the food processor and process until mixed
• Pour out the mixture into the bowl
• Add the ¼ cup of syrup and ¼ cup of nut/seed butter to the bowl
• Add the smaller seeds/coconut flakes to the bowl
• Mix until thoroughly combined (you may have to use your hands)
• Line the baking pan with parchment paper, pour the mixture into the pan, and flatten roughly with the back of a spoon
• Place parchment paper on top and press the mixture down flat with the bottom of a glass or other flat object
• Place the mixture in the freezer for 20 minutes or the fridge for 40-60 minutes
• After chilling, remove the mixture from the baking pan, take off the parchment paper, and cut into equal portions

Depending on the ingredients used, they will usually keep for a couple weeks in the fridge or a couple months in the freezer. Although the ingredients are shelf stable on their own, I’m not yet sure how long it takes for a room-temperature granola bar to go bad, but I’d imagine you want to consume it within three days or so.

Alterations

Generally this recipe just consists of oats, dried fruits, seeds, a sweetener, and something to bind it all together. You can play around with pretty much all of those ingredients to find a set of flavours that you like the best. You can also play around with the proportions of ingredients to arrive at a consistency that you like.

If you don’t have a food processor, you could manually chop the ingredients into smaller pieces, or keep them whole if you’re not using large seeds or dried fruit.