Snack Bars.

Homemade Snack Bars

Since Mark doesn't always feel like eating breakfast at 5 something in the morning before work, he likes to stick a Fiber One bar in his pocket so that he doesn't totally fizzle out before getting to eat lunch.  So after buying a couple of boxes of them at Sam's the other day (we now have 40something bars in our cabinet), I started to wonder if it would be easy to make something like them at home.  Without all of those weird additives and such.

I figured if I found a good recipe for the stuff that makes it all stick together, then we already had some decent ingredients in our kitchen that would make for a pretty good snack bar.

I used this Homemade Granola Bar recipe for reference.

I think you could pretty much use whatever crunchy or chewy nutty/fruity/cereal-ish goodness tickles your fancy; just make the total amt. of dry ingredients add up to about 4.5 - 5 cups

Here's what I used in mine:

• Organic Cheerio-like cereal (This particular brand I had bought tasted like cardboard, so I thought this would be a perfect way to get rid of it!)
• Chopped Pecans
• Pumpkin Seeds
• Oatmeal
• I added 1/2 cup of Flax Seed after toasting

Pecans, Pumpkin Seeds, Oatmeal, Cereal, Flax Seed

And for the "glue that holds it all together" I followed the recipe directions except....

• I left out the vanilla extract
• I used 1/3 cup honey and 1/3 cup peanut butter
• I used half the amt. of Brown sugar  (it was already very sweet!)

And then, because my original idea was to make them Peanut Butter and Chocolate Flavored, I dipped the bottoms in a thin layer of melted chocolate

Mark likes 'em!  These were so simple, and I think it will be fun to make various flavors with whatever kinds of ingredients we like!