Fruit & Oatmeal Bars

My constant search for healthy snacks has led me to semi-experimenting in the kitchen. I wanted to make an oat-based cookie using apple sauce, but I have yet to find a recipe that meets all of my dietary wishes. I finally figured that I'd look for granola bar recipes to get some inspiration, and that led me to this recipe at QuakerOats.com. Of course I've adapted it some, but I followed the basic instructions.

What I used:

1 1/2 cups crispy rice cereal (I bought the store brand)

1 1/4 cups uncooked oats

1 1/2 cups dried fruit (I used dried cranberries, dried blueberries, and raisins)

1/4 cup coconut

2/3 cup honey

4 tbs buttery spread

3 tbs granulated sugar

1/2 tbs cinnamon

Ingredients--minus the apple sauce. How did that get in the picture?!

How I did it:

First I mixed the cereal, oats, fruit, and coconut together in the 8x8 pan. Simple.

Next, I heated the honey, butter, sugar, and cinnamon in a saucepan. The recipe said to put on med-low heat, stir it frequently but let it boil while stirring frequently? I was confused so I just heated it through so the sugar and honey were well-mixed. 

Before heating. 

Once the honey-buttery-sugar mixture was heated, I removed it from the heat and mixed my cereal-oatmeal-fruit mixture into the saucepan. I mixed the two mixtures together with a wooden spoon until the cereal-oatmeal-fruit mixture was well coated. I slid it all back into the 8x8 pan and pressed it with wax paper.

Rating:

They look and smell really good, and they were pretty easy to prepare. The recipe says to let them "cool completely" in the refrigerator before cutting into bars and storing in an airtight container. Justin couldn't wait. He just helped himself to a little corner piece that turned out more like granola than a granola bar. I don't think they're completely cooled, but he gave the taste 2 thumbs up at least!

Hopefully they'll come out as beautiful bars when I go back in there in a little bit!

Morning update:

"They're delightful," says Justin. The taste is a winner, but I'm a little upset that they're not coming out as perfect bars. A few of them have cut really well, but some of them don't stay together when they get to the plate. These are not eat-on-the-go bars for sure! I think that the honey mixture didn't get sticky enough when I was heating it, so it didn't make the bars stick as well as I would have hoped.

Now that I have a basic recipe down, I can play with it some more and hopefully create different oatmeal bars/cookies! I got a recipe for a peanut butter & jelly oatmeal bar. Maybe that will be next!