{"id":138,"date":"2009-06-20T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-20T00:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.wordpress.com\/2009\/06\/20\/mix-and-match-granola-bars\/"},"modified":"2009-06-20T00:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-20T00:17:00","slug":"mix-and-match-granola-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/20\/mix-and-match-granola-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"Mix and Match Granola Bars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We do a lot of eating on the go and I tend to stock up on car snacks to avoid fast food stops.&nbsp; Granola bars are a favorite snack around here but the ones I want (all natural and relatively healthy) tend to be pretty expensive when you&#8217;re feeding 6 people.&nbsp; Add a peanut allergy in there and it&#8217;s very hard to find anything that works for our family.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a recipe I&#8217;ve adapted from some I found online.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve tweaked them a lot to make ours healthier (original versions called for corn syrup and a few raisins) and made it completely flexible to match whatever is in your cupboard or whatever you&#8217;re in the mood for!&nbsp; Best of all, there&#8217;s no baking and it&#8217;s super quick to whip up!<\/p>\n<p>Victoria says she likes these bars more than chocolate.&nbsp; I&#8217;m not sure I like anything better than chocolate (except perhaps my kids and hubby&#8211; most days!), but they are pretty darn good.<\/p>\n<p>This makes a big batch because if you&#8217;re going to go to the trouble of making granola bars up then I think you should make enough that you don&#8217;t have to do it every day!&nbsp; Besides, they get gobbled up really quickly!<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3338\/3643109192_e7f8a7793c.jpg?v=0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:x-large;\"><strong>Alicia&#8217;s Mix and Match Granola Bars<br \/><span style=\"font-size:medium;\"><br \/>Makes about 20 full sized bars or 30 smaller bars<\/p>\n<p>Ingredients:<br \/>4 cups quick cooking oats<br \/>3 cups dry cereal *<br \/>2 cups dried fruit **<br \/>1 cup nuts or seeds ***<br \/>1 cup packed brown sugar<br \/>1 cup honey<br \/>1 cup sunbutter, soy nut butter or peanut butter<br \/>2 tsp real vanilla <\/p>\n<p>1.&nbsp; Grease and set aside a 9&#215;13 or 10&#215;14 inch baking pan.<\/p>\n<p>2.&nbsp; In a very large bowl, stir together the oats, cereal, fruit and nuts.<\/p>\n<p>3.&nbsp; Heat the brown sugar and honey in a pan over medium heat, stirring often, just until boiling.&nbsp; Remove from heat and stir in the nut butter and vanilla.<\/p>\n<p>4.&nbsp; Pour hot mixture over dry mixture and mix well.&nbsp; (If you are adding in chocolate chips, allow the mixture to cool slightly so they do not melt.)<\/p>\n<p>5.&nbsp; Press very firmly into prepared pan (wetting your hands can help a bit).&nbsp; Allow to cool and cut into bars.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:large;\">*<\/span>&nbsp; Good dry cereal choices are rice crispies, cheerios and corn flakes.&nbsp; Rice crispies are perfect but a<\/span><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-size:x-large;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium;\">nything crunchy will do.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-size:x-large;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium;\"><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:large;\">**<\/span>&nbsp; Dried fruit options include raisins, cranberries, blueberries, cherries, pineapple, etc.&nbsp; Diced prunes are surprisingly sweet and delicious but they&#8217;re rather sticky.&nbsp; I dust them with powdered sugar to chop them so they don&#8217;t make a sticky mass.&nbsp; You can also add ingredients like coconut and chocolate chips.&nbsp; Our favorite mix so far is chopped prunes, tart cherries, coconut and some whitechocolate chips.&nbsp; You can also do themes like tropical with coconut, papaya, pineapple&#8230; <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:large;\">***<\/span> Any nuts or seeds will do.&nbsp; These contribute protein, texture and a bigger health punch.&nbsp; Options include sunflower seeds, chopped almonds, pecans, sesame seeds, flax seeds&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-size:x-large;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium;\">I wrap these in aluminum foil for on-the-go snacks.&nbsp; They can be kept at room temperature or refrigerated.&nbsp; They are slightly sticky and soft at room temperature, or at least they are in the summer.<\/span><\/strong><\/span><span style=\"font-size:x-large;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size:medium;\"><\/p>\n<p>Enjoy!<\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/strong><\/span><strong><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We do a lot of eating on the go and I tend to stock up on car snacks to avoid fast food stops.&nbsp; Granola bars are a favorite snack around here but the ones I want (all natural and relatively healthy) tend to be pretty expensive when you&#8217;re feeding 6 people.&nbsp; Add a peanut allergy&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[190,215],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/magicalchildhood.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}