No-Bake Granola Bars

Confession: I have been buying oats, nuts, seeds and dried fruit to excess this past year. Of all the fatal flaws a person could have, this is probably not the worst. And yet, my husband has been dropping gentle hints about how maybe I can find something to make with all this stuff…so it will, you know, disappear from the pantry, and (in my mind) make room for more of it, or (in his mind) make room for the homemade beer he is forced to ferment in his office closet.

Domestic bliss, right?

But yes, I have a seeds/nuts/oats/dried fruit problem. It began earlier this year when I had romantic notions about making healthier snacks for the household. It ended (sort of) when I blew up my food processor trying to make some sort of raw candy bar out of cashews, chocolate chips, coconut and I-forget-what-else.

“Is that smoke coming out of the food processor?” my nine year old asked.

“No,” I told her, before sniffing the air and realizing that yes, it was indeed smoke…and…oops…my food processor was no longer working.

So much for those candy bars.

The dream died there, if only for an instant. Ever since that ill-fated evening, I’ve been eating oatmeal and dried fruit and/or nuts and honey for breakfast, which means the unrelenting need to have these products on hand has not ceased (in my mind alone). But today, I decided to go back to this healthy snack idea. I decided to make chewy granola bars. I found a great David Lebovitz recipe on his website and adapted it a little bit to reflect the ridiculous amount of seeds and almonds (slivered and otherwise) that I have in the pantry. After toasting the oats and such and leaving them out to cool, I added dark chocolate chips and chopped dates to the mixture just to keep the flavor simple.

Then, I combined almond butter with raw honey and a pinch of salt to create the oozy, chewy sauce that binds it all together.

I added the sauce to the contents of the picture above, mixing it in with my hands to get it fully incorporated. After that, I smoothed the mixture into a parchment-lined baking pan. This is what it looked like:

I froze this for thirty minutes, then took it out and sliced it into bars. Mine didn’t look pastry chef perfect, but they tasted fantastic.

Here they are: