Homemade granola bars that sorta worked

The girls and I thought we’d be all adventurous and make our own granola bars. Sounded fun, maybe healthier than the store-bought ones, plus (and most importantly) we could put in exactly what we wanted.

So we looked at a few recipes on the internet and then mixed up our own concoction. They were really fun to make (Ro and Ree could do it all themselves) and tasted great! The only thing is that they were too crumbly, and I think I know how to fix that.

Here’s what we did (along with the two steps that I bet would’ve made these babies stick together really well):

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 rolled oats (not instant)
• 1 cup roughly chopped dried blueberries (could use any type of dried fruit like apricots, raisins, cherries, cranberries, etc.)
• 1 cup roughly chopped unsalted almonds
• 1/2 cup wheat germ (if you’ve never bought this, like me, it’s located next to the oatmeal in the cereal aisle)
• 1/2 cup flour (most recipes called for whole wheat flour, but we didn’t have any in the house so used white)
• 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder
• 3/4 cup maple syrup
• 4 Tablespoons melted butter
• 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup mini marshmallows

3. Taste the mixture to make sure you didn’t forget any good stuff. Mmmm:

3. Transfer mixture to your greased pan. (After ours turned out too crumbly, I read that you need to really press them into the pan, we didn’t do this but will next time.)

4. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown and slightly crispy on top. (Again, after getting crumbly bars, we read that you should really press them down into the pan after removing from oven. We’ll try it!)

5. Cool completely before cutting into bars. I saw on some sites that you should let them cool for hours before cutting, so don’t be like us and make sure you do that. Heh. Then wrap them up in saran wrap (if they don’t get snarfed up immediately) and use them for lunches, snacks, whatever.

If anyone has any ideas on how to make them stick together better, please share, because we are definitely doing this again. These little bars were delicious!