Kitchen Sink Homemade Granola Bar Recipe
A simple recipe for the best homemade granola bars. They’re healthy, chewy, crunchy, versatile, made without honey, and naturally vegan! The perfect snack.
- Prep Time: 5 mins
- Cook Time: 20 mins
- Total Time: 25 mins
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
- Category: Snack
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- ½ cup dried cranberries
- ½ cup dried cherries
- ½ cup dried prunes
- ½ cup flaked coconut
- ½ cup dried dates
- ½ cup chopped almonds
- ½ cup pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds)
- ½ cup sunflower seeds
- ½ cup flax seeds (ground or whole)
- ½ cup wheat germ
- 1⅔ cup oats
- ¾ cup plus 2 Tbsp homemade sweetened condensed milk
Instructions
- Line a 8×8 or 9×9 glass pan with two large pieces of parchment paper that overhang the edges. You want to create “handles” on each edge to help lift the granola out of the pan once it’s cooled. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Chop any big pieces of fruit into smaller pieces. Everything should be about the size of a dried cranberry. You don’t want to take one bite and get a mouthful of fig. (Trust me on this one.)
- Once everything is chopped, put everything except the oats and milk into a big bowl. Mix the fruit and nuts thoroughly, breaking up any pieces of fruit that are stuck together. Add the oats and again mix thoroughly. Add the milk and stir until everything all (or nearly all) the ingredients are moist.
- Carefully pour (or scoop) your mixture into your glass pan. Using either greased hands or another piece of parchment paper, press the mixture very firmly into the bottom of the pan, ensuring that it’s level across the pan and into corners. (In order to press it firmly enough, I had to put the pan on the floor and use my full body weight. This may sound silly, but it was effective!)
- Once the mixture is pressed firmly and evenly, bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes. You want the edges to be slightly brown, so check every few minutes or so after you hit 20.
- Remove from the oven when the homemade granola bars are done. Cool completely on a wire rack before cutting.
Notes
* If you would like to modify the recipe, here’s where the artsy science stuff comes into play. No matter what combination of fruits and nuts you want to use (apples, raisins, chocolate chips, walnuts, macadamia… whatever), you need about 5 cups total for the above measurements of oats and milk to work. If you want less or more bars, here’s the math:
(total cups of fruits & nuts) / 3 = (cups of oats)
(cups of oats) / 2 = (cups of milk)
* Want to put this in a 9×13 pan? Double the recipe: 10 cups of fruits & nuts, 3⅓ cups of oats and just over 1½ cups of milk. If you only have 4 cups of fruit and nuts, use the formula above to get the right amount of oats and milk.
* Experience from failed attempts leads me to believe that your measurements can be slightly off. Not by a ton, but a little spillage of cranberries or picked out chocolate chips won’t ruin the batch.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 bar
- Calories: 132
