Homemade Granola Bars snack food recipe

Homemade granola

My kids love eat granola bars.  So I bought a lot of them last year as you can imagine.  A lot of money went into buying them, even on sale…and some got stale before they could eat them. Time to make our own homemade granola bars.

I started playing with different recipes and with some modifications, found one that they liked and the kids were willing to eat.

Your granola bars will be fresh every week.  Your kids will love helping decide what fruits and sweets they want in them. You can mix it up with chocolate chips, cherries, sunflower seeds whatever they like (or you want them to eat)

Ingredients:

1 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips (or cherries, raisins, other small or chopped berries)
1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons peanut butter
9×9 pan with parchment paper inside covering the sides

how to make homemade granola

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees
Take the 9×9 pan and cover ensure the parchment paper goes up and over the sides.
Spray with Pam.
Mix the oatmeal, nuts, chocolate chips, salt in large bowl.
In a separate smaller bowl, mix the honey, vanilla and peanut butter.
Pour the honey mixture over the dry ingredients and mix.
Press into the 9×9 and flatten.
You can use a piece of parchment paper placed on top of the granola and press down to not get all messy.
Bake for 20-25 minutes for soft granola and 25-30 minutes for crunchy.
Once baked, remove from the oven and carefully take a knife and cut your granola (so it will cool together).
If you don’t cut it before, you can just crumble it up and have a snack mix as it won’t be easy to cut once it’s cooled.

And you just saved a ton of money and made homemade granola bars for your kids lunches.