Granola bars

Pack up some protein for a Spring hike (Come onnnn, Spring!!!...)!


Cranberry Crunch Granola Bars


Equipment: large spoon and bowl or stand mixer with dough attachment, jelly roll pan

Ingredients:

• 5 c. rolled oats
• 1 c. wheat germ
• 1 c. sweetened coconut
• 1 c. dried cranberries
• 1 cup roasted, salted peanuts
• 1/2 c. brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 3 Tbsp. cashew butter
• 2 Tbsp. honey
• 1 Tbsp. peanut butter
• 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil or canola oil
• 2 tsp. kosher salt 

Directions:

• Pre-heat oven to 275
• Butter and lightly flour jelly roll sheet
• Mix all ingredients well
• Pack well into jelly roll pan, squishing the mixture down. This recipe will nearly fill the pan, I like to fill in 3/4 of the way, leaving an exposed area of pan and pushing mixture in from exposed area to form a flat edge.
• Bake 20 minutes, turn pan and bake again 20 minutes. Remove pan, cut into bars using greased knife, spread bars apart (hence the exposed area of pan, leaving room to spread them) and bake once more, about 10 minutes to allow the edges of bars to crisp. 
• Cool and eat!

-Feel free to play around with ingredients here, pumpkin seeds rather than peanuts, all peanut butter, all cashew butter, almond butter instead, another dried fruit rather than cranberries... just follow the guidelines for amounts of binding ingredients, dry ingredients and sweetening ingredients and they'll come out great!


Enjoy!

XO, Debbie