Adventures in Granola

For a self-proclaimed granola freak like myself, store-bought favorites get costly very quickly.  Considering the fact that I would eat granola for breakfast and snacks, and can make full meals out of granola bars, I have to reel myself in.  When that doesn't work, I need to make my own.

Enter: Katie at Kitchen Stewardship.  She posted her granola recipe ages ago, and I have been faithful to it ever since.  I love it.  It is so simple and delicious.  Check it out...

Granola Before:

Granola After:

 TaDa!

Now the harder part is the granola bars.  I don't like them to be crispy and hard to bite into.  I don't like them to be so chewey they hurt my jaw.  I don't like them to be cookie-like.  I am a bit too picky.  

Over the course of my granola bar making, I have made ONE batch that was perfect, to me.  Unfortunately, I did not bookmark the link to the recipe and it is now lost forever into cyberspace.  I do make them often, however, and I thought I would share my latest attempt.

Based upon this recipe (also from Kitchen Stewardship, although I changed it), I dove into this version. 

The biggest changes I made were using the granola above, subbing 1/2 homemade peanut butter for 1/2 of the butter, and omitting the flour.  

The liquid ingredients were melted together in the pan,

 And then the granola was added in.

After it was all stirred up and mixed together, it was pressed into a pyrex pan lined with parchment paper. 

 I then assembled the add-ins...

And pressed them into the tops of the bars.

The extra parchment paper got folded over the bars and I pressed it down with ALL MY STRENGTH.  Then, since all my strength is still not much, John helped.  

The result?  Pretty crumbly.  I'm not sure why, maybe it was the peanut butter substitution or something.  They were delicious, though, so I'll keep trying. 

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