Lately I’ve been making my own granola bars.  I blame Whole Foods for this development; I got the inspiration while looking through the snack recipes on their website and found one for chocolate chip granola bars.  It looked pretty simple (it IS pretty simple) and besides, I love granola bars but often they make me sick.  I tend to have bouts of reactive hypoglycemia fairly often and commercial granola bars are usually full of sugar and corn syrup which is a bad thing for me to have, and natural store-bought granola bars are pretty expensive.  So I thought, why not?  I’ll make my own.  It’ll be like the culinary equivalent of cutting down your own trees for wood.  Or something like that.

The original WF recipe is below.  For my bars, I use walnuts, and I actually also throw in some shredded coconut and a bit of cinnamon.

Chocolate Chip Granola Bars

Ingredients
4 cups of quick cooking oats
1/3 cup canola oil
2/3 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped organic nuts (optional)

Method
Preheat oven to 350°F. Spread oats on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes, stirring a couple of times. Allow oats to cool to room temperature. Combine remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Add cooled oats. Spread mixture into a 9×13-inch baking dish that has been sprayed or oiled, pressing down hard to compact it.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool completely and cut into bars.

Nutrition
With chopped nuts:Per serving (50g-wt.): 230 calories (110 from fat), 13g total fat, 2g saturated fat, 4g protein, 28g total carbohydrate (3g dietary fiber, 14g sugar), 0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium Without chopped nuts:Per serving (42g-wt.): 180 calories (70 from fat), 7g total fat, 1.5g saturated fat, 3g protein, 27g total carbohydrate (2g dietary fiber, 14g sugar), 0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium

Other Granola Bar Recipes
CookEatShare

Sugar Free Granola Bars

Cranberry Cinnamon Granola Bars

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

Raspberry Granola Bars