Thursday, July 14, 2011

homemade apple cinnamon granola bars aka apple crisp to go

I love granola bars! they are really way expensive though. 4 bucks for 8 bars?? really?? So what do I do? find out how to make them myself! of course! with some Internet searching I came across a ton(and i mean a ton) of recipes and how tos. I decided that I would mix them and do some testing to find what we liked best. So what I came up with was:

Mix the following on a cookie sheet with sides:
2 1/4 cups oats
3/4 cup cream of wheat
1 cup crushed peanuts

put this in the oven at about 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes, stirring a couple times to evenly toast.
While that is toasting mix the following in a sauce pan over medium heat until mixture liquefies completely:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp Cinnamon

in a large bowl mix all of the above ingredients AND 1 1/2 cup chopped dried apples until the dry mixture is COMPLETELY coated with the wet mixture. Line a cake pan with foil or wax paper. Grease the foil. top with another piece of greased foil/wax paper.  Press your mixture into the pan as firmly as you can. I used the sauce pan to press down. put in the freezer for a couple hours, until the granola is completely cooled. flip onto a cutting pan and cut into you desired size bars.

The whole process took about 20 minutes(not counting freezer time) and they turned out absolutely scrumptious!! like apple crisp in bar form.

I based my recipe on the ideas from here: Granola bars, granola bars 2, Granola bars 3. The first link is where most of my inspiration came from. I really didn't want to bake them and that one helped me figure out how I could get away with not baking :)

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