When Baby Wants Granola Bars, You Make Her Granola Bars

Maddie was "helping" me clean up the kitchen the morning when she toddled over to me with the canister full of Quaker chewy granola bars. It was after breakfast, before nap and nowhere near snack time so I put them back in the cabinet and gave her a couple apple slices to munch on instead. Soon enough she had pulled out the tumbler of oats, a bag of granola, and the tub of cheerios. And I thought to myself... why  not?

Now, I had never made granola bars before. I looked at a few recipes online to confirm that I didn't have to cook the oats and had at it. Here's what I needed to make the magic happen:

Chewy No-Bake Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

Ingredients:

• 4 tbsp butter (salted or unsalted is fine)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup oats
• 1 cup granola
• 1 cup Cheerios (I would have prefered Rice Krispees but I didn't have any so I grabbed the closest "puff type cerial" I had)
• 2 tbsp chocolate chips

Tools you'll need:

• Sauce pot
• Spatula
• Pan, baking sheet, or casserole dish for cooling (whatever you have that floats your boat)
• Measuring cups
• Parchment paper (optional)
• Cooking spray (optional)

After Maddie supplied me the dry ingredients, I pulled down some butter, brown sugar and honey. And let's throw some chocolate chips in there for good measure They seemed like good binding and sweetening agents. She happily munched on her apples while I went to work, diligently watching my every move. I love how interested she is when I cook and how closely she observes. 

But back to the bars. First thing I did was combine the sugar, honey and butter in the pot, melted them down and combined over medium heat. 

While the Paula Deen portion of the show came together, I combined the rest of my dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Since I didn't have the cereal I really wanted for this dish and didn't want it to be too obvious that I had used Cheerios instead, I crushed it up a little as I mixed it. 

Once the wet ingredients were melted together nicely I removed the pot from the heat and added the dry ingredients to them, making sure to mix it really well.

My original intention was to put the parchment paper down on the cookie sheet and spread the mixture out on top of it but once I had everything in the pot together I knew the sheet was going to be too big and the bars would be spread out way too thin. I opted for my glass 9x13 Pyrex dish spraying it first with some cooking spray to prevent sticking. I made sure to spread the mixture out as evenly and tightly packed as possible.

After that I popped the tray in the fridge to let it cool and set up. And that's it! When Maddie woke up from her nap, I sliced the bars using my pizza cutter but I guess you could use a knife. It's your mental well being so use whatever you want, I don't care. I cut the sheet into 16 bars and put them in a leftover takeout container to store in the fridge. I imagine they're going to get eaten fairly quickly, so I probably could have wrapped them individually in parchment and stored on my counter but I don't know how long or well they would keep and don't feel like experimenting with that on my first try. But if one of y'all store them differently and it works, by all means let me know!

There were a rousing success and Maddie gobbled one down with her lunch of leftover pizza from yesterday and her apple snack (which I snagged off Pinterest this morning and OMG it's amazing so go make that immediately. I'm pretty sure between the two of us we ate three whole apples today.).

And yes, I have come to realize that every picture of my daughter is probably going to be of her shoving food in her mouth. And yes, the only time she sits is when she's strapped down to her booster seat so I'm not too worried about it :-)

Do you have any snack foods you opt to make yourself? Any you'd like to see me attempt? I probably draw the line at fruit snacks but you never know, I may get the itch.

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