Granola bars win, sugar cookies fail

Tweaked our granola bar recipe and tried again (Ro was in a cooking kind of a mood, Ree was off somewhere reading one of her Rainbow Magic books from the library) and this time it worked! These little babies were great. Here’s the recipe:

Ro’s Successful Granola Bars

1. Preheat oven to 350 and grease an 8” or 9” square pan.

2. Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl:

• 2 cups instant oats
• 1 cup roughly chopped dried fruit (for these bars we cleaned out the cupboard and used a combo of dried apricots, raisins, and dried blueberries)
• 1 cup roughly chopped unsalted almonds
• 1/2 cup wheat germ (it’s located next to the oatmeal in the cereal aisle)
• 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder
• 3/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup maple syrup (Put this in a little bit at a time, you might not need it all to make everything gloopy. We used it all this time.)
• 4 Tablespoons melted butter
• 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup mini marshmallows

3. Transfer mixture to your greased pan and use a flat spatula to press the mixture down really hard (you’ll see it compress).

4. Bake for 25 minutes until light golden brown on top, then remove from oven and press down hard with your spatula (you’ll see them compress again).

5. Cool completely (probably for a few hours) before cutting into bars. Then wrap the bars in saran wrap store in the fridge.

Yum!

Oh, and about the fail: I got these awesome Chinese character candy molds off the internet and was going to make little sugar cookies with them for the favor bags at the girls’ upcoming party. They looked GREAT before the oven. I was using a recipe called “No-Fail Sugar Cookies” that wasn’t supposed to spread or rise AT ALL when baked. And, of course, they spread during baking and the Chinese characters got all blobby and unrecognizable. Fail! I’m thinking we’ll be using the molds with candy melts to make colored chocolate pops for the favor bags instead...

Guess I’d better get to cleaning up that kitchen. And figuring out what to do with the dozens and dozens of smallish blob-covered sugar cookies. If anyone wants any, come on over!