...because we all have our motley moments!


Monday, November 16, 2009

Granola Bars

"Mother-love is not inevitable. The good mother is a great artist ever creating beauty out of chaos."
~ Alice Randall

This afternoon, Alex and I were making some homemade granola bars for him to take to school for snacks. I had visions of him helping me measure and poor, and toast and coat, but the reality was a little different than I pictured. Still, we do have granola bars, we did spend time in the same room, and we did not argue. We have success!

Alex "helping" me in the kitchen.

The granola bars are pretty easy, and I got the recipe from joyfulabode.com. I have tried a few other recipes from her site, and they are delicious.

As usual, I didn't have exactly all of the ingredients in her recipe, so I improvised. I toasted:
2 cups oats
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup pecans
A handful or more of coconut flakes


Her recipe calls for wheat germ, which I have never used and do not keep on hand. I have made these bars twice without it, and they still taste great! She recommends toasting the dry ingredients at 400 degrees. I, of course, almost burnt mine while I was getting the sauce together, so I turned the oven down to 350.

For the sauce:
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix these ingredients and cook over medium heat until they simmer. Well, this time, I only had about 1/4 cup of honey, so I used all of that and a full cup of brown sugar. Again, this worked for our bars.

Resulting chaos

She recommends adding dried fruit to the bars, which would be delicious. Since I didn't have any dried fruit, I did what any good mom would do. I added marshmallows and miniature Hershey Kisses! I think Alex's teacher will be really glad snack time is at the very end of the day.

Finally, some help with the granola bars.

I must say I feel a little like the little red hen! He is cute though. It reminds me of a line from one of my husband's favorite movies, Blazing Saddles. BTW, if you haven't ever watched the movie, you must know it is unbelievably crude - not a kid's movie.

"Y'know, Nietzsche says 'Out of chaos comes order.'"

~ Howard Johnson

2 comments:

Lindsay said...

Those look yummy, thanks for the recipe!

This happens to me all the time. I bake "with" the girls. Sometimes they are really into it, other times I find myself doing everything while they wait for the final product....lol

Liz said...

That recipe looks really good! I love how you change it around to make it "yours." :)