Granola Bars!

Last week, Sam (18mo) was feeding himself some granola and making an epic mess while consuming very little of the actual granola.  Brandon and I talked about how we needed to start making granola bars for Sam so that he could get a little more of the food into his mouth.  And later that exact same day, our new friend Carie (Hi Carie!) asked me on Facebook about making granola into a granola bar.  So, off on the hunt I went.

There are a couple of different ways that you could "construct" a granola bar.  One way would be to use the date mixture from our Lara Bar recipe and combine it with our granola recipe until you get the consistency you are looking for.  I didn't have the supplies on hand to try this way out, but I will soon and I'll let you know the results.  If you try it out, let me know!

So, what I did try out though, was this recipe.  I made them as prescribed (that's a little CrossFit reference for all you CrossFitters out there), as I usually do when I first try out a recipe.  We liked the way they turned out, but they were a little sweet for us grownups.  Don't get me wrong though, they were absolutely delicious.  It doesn't seem like you could cut the honey down in the recipe because it's crucial in holding everything together.  And if you're giving these to kids, I highly doubt they're going to have a problem with the sweetness.

Overall though, I think this is a great recipe.  They come together really quickly and cut up very easily.  I would recommend that you keep them refrigerated as they seem to keep their firmness a little better.  Although it was 85 degrees out on the day that we made these, so that might have contributed a little bit.

I wrapped most of the batch up individually and stuck them in the fridge.  They'll be great to grab on our way out the door or to toss in a lunch.  I think we ended up with 16-18 bars, which should last us at least a day or two...

***Edited to add: My sister suggested using those snack size ziploc bags instead of taking the time to wrap up each individual bar.  Great idea!