View topic - Granola Bar FAIL

I tried my hand at home-made granola bars and what I got for my trouble is a lot more like Harvest Crunch. Tasty but by no means in bar form. I noticed that other recipes, including Jaffe's, are quite different and they include flour and butter so perhaps somewhere along a continuum cookies give way to bars which give way to Harvest Crunch granola.

I followed this formula and recipe. For sweetener I used maple syrup and for binder, nut butter.

Source: http://www.vegwebkincardine.com/2012/03 ... r-any.html

The Basic Granola Bar Formula
1) Rolled Grains (2 1/2 cups)
any combination of rolled oats, rye flakes, quinoa flakes ...
2) Nuts, Seeds and Spices (1 cup)
sunflower seeds, slivered almonds, flax seed, chopped walnuts, cinnamon, chai spice ...
3) Dried Fruits (1 cup)
cranberries, raisins, currants, goji berries, chopped dates or mango ...
4) Sticky Sweetener (1/3 cup + 1/4 cup)
honey, agave syrup, brown rice syrup, molasses ...
5) Binder (1 cup)
pureed dried fruit, almond butter, peanut butter, apple butter, apple sauce ...


Here's the recipe that I made:
2 1/2 cups Rolled Oats
1 cup mixed sunflower seeds, almonds, carob chips and hemp hearts
1 cup mixed currants and chopped mango
1tbsp butter
1/3+1/4 cup honey
1 cup smooth almond butter and smooth peanut butter

Instructions:
1.Mix oats, seeds and fruits in a bowl, set aside.
2.In a small saucepan, melt a little butter (or just a touch of oil) on the lowest temperature possible and add honey. Add nut butters and stir until smooth and liquid. If your binders and sweeteners are totally pourable already you may not have to do this. My nut butters were pretty dry and my honey had crystallized so I had to melt them a little.
3.Pour wet mixture into dry and blend together until everything is evenly coated. I find a rubber spatula works
4.Spoon into a 11x7 pan and bake at 325 F for 25 min until golden brown.
5.Put in the freezer for one hour, take out and let them come back to room temperature, then slice into bars. Store them in an airtight container in the fridge. Makes 12-16 bars, depends how big you like them!

Look for no bake recipes.

We make one that uses dates and nut butter mixed blended in a food processor as the binder. We use honey as a sweetener and whatever mix of grains and dried fruit that we happen to have in stock. The whole mix then goes in a saucepan and is then pressed into a tray and allowed to set in the refrigerator before being cut into pieces.

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