Granola Bars

A very typical question to ask someone would be, what is your favorite smell? My favorite smell is fresh baked dark chocolate lava cake with raspberry puree, and Kevin after he has been working at the wood shop. a less common question would be what is your least favorite smell, but I will answer that anyway. My least favorite smell is burnt chocolate, which unfortunately I experienced last night. However as most unfortunate events go, if you look for a silver lining you will probably find one.

Last night I attempted, and then succeeded to make granola bars, I usually just make granola cereal, but I wanted to turn it into a bar so the kids would be more apt to eat it. Unfortunately I forgot to set my timer on the first batch and I left it in the oven too long. So I tried again, after all it is quite easy to make and I couldn't let the smell of burnt chocolate have the last word. So I tried again, this time adding one ingredient and setting the timer and voila... granola bars.

8 cups Rolled Oats
1 cup walnuts
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup applesauce

Combine all dry ingredients. Stir to mix. Add peanut butter, honey, syrup, and applesauce all together. Put your spatula aside, and with clean hands, blend ingredients. Yes its messy, and also a great, fun and  sticky kitchen projects that kids will love to help with. Once mix is thoroughly combined wash your hands. Then take up your trusty spatula and spread evenly into a cookie sheet or casserole dish. bake at 350* for 15-20 minutes. This is just the base recipe, and the beauty of it is that you can add what ever dry ingredients you want to this mix to make your favorite granola bars. I like to add marshmallows, dried fruit, assorted nuts. Feel free to make this your own, one bit of advice, stick to dried fruit, fresh will add more moisture to the recipe and will have a different outcome, also same goes for adding moisture absorbing ingredients. My general rule is your mix should ball together and stick in clumps before you spread it out to bake, if it does it will become bars. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. Or just crumble into a gallon Ziploc bag for cereal! Enjoy!