Homemade Granola Bars

Ziva's a bit better today. But I think Anya's now starting to come down with it and Hubs is in full on "Ugh... I can't breathe!" mode. I'm starting to feel pretty tired and worn down and I have a headache.

Oh, and just because God has such a rockin' sense of humor...

it snowed today.

I hate snow.

I feel like scarfing junk food.

But we have none in the house because I'm dieting.

Sigh.

So it's a good thing I have pictures in my camera of a recipe for granola bars that I made last week because I don't think my brain is functioning enough to come up with any more witty things to say. :)

Serenity NOW!

This granola bar recipe came from a book my mom gave me called Feed Me! I'm Yours! It's only $5 on Amazon right now so you should really hurry up and go order a copy. I've made several good recipes from this book for the girls and it has many wonderful real life solutions for feeding babies and toddlers. Some of the recipes are VERY 1975, but I think that's part of why I like it so much. Reminds me of things my mom used to make when I was little.



Anyway... back to the granola bars.

They were delicious, BUT they didn't really turn out how I would have hoped, so if some of you culinary experts could closely pay attention to what I did and then tell me what I did wrong that'd be awesome! :)

Here's my cast of characters:

Oats, brown sugar, butter, baking soda & dried cranberries. The recipe didn't call for any dried fruit but I just decided to add some, maybe that's where I went wrong.



First, melt 1/2 cup of butter, 3/4 cup of brown sugar, and "a dash" of baking soda.



If this is wrong... then I don't wanna be right!



And then you add 2 cups of oats.

I don't have a picture of that.

Oops!

But I do have a picture of me adding 1/2 cup of cranberries.



Then the recipe says you should put it all into an ungreased 9x9 baking pan.

Which worked out just fine so go ahead and do that.



I spread it out all nice and even and popped it in the oven at 350 for 10 minutes.



Ten minutes later the house smelled awesome, and I pulled it out of the oven.

TA DA!!!



It looks amazingly similar to the first picture, huh?

So then I let it cool in the pan. When it was completely cooled I decided to cut it up and sneak a piece (Warning: do not make this on Day 2 of your diet, because you will scarf down WAY more than you should.)

And then I realized I had a problem.

Not only did I now I have something totally yummy in the house that I couldn't leave alone, but it also fell apart into a million little pieces when I cut into it.

These were not granola BARS, it was just granola.



And you know how when you cook something and say one cookie is misshapen and it must be eaten right away before anyone else sees it? Yeah... well I had a whole entire batch if crumbly falling apart granola "bars" that just called to me. I eventually had to just dump it all in a freezer bag and toss it in the freezer so that I would stop munching on handfuls of it.



So, Verdict?

It was VERY GOOD! But also not what I was hoping for. I was hoping for a snack that I could give the girls in the living room that I wouldn't have to vacuum up a billion crumbs after they'd eaten it. This is exactly the kind of messy snack that I was trying to avoid, so it didn't serve my purpose. BUT, it was very tasty, and I'm sure it would be awesome in a bowl with a splash of milk.