Thursday, April 3, 2014

Chocolate Chip and Quinoa Granola Bars


Grocery budgets are a funny thing. They make you think that you have all the choices you want... until you start adding on your calculator! Recently, it's been tough to fit those extras onto the conveyer belt.  We had really been enjoying "Kind"  bars but you know how that goes so I had added it to my long list of things to make myself in order to save my budget and make my family happy. It wasn't until I came across a picture of this
granola bar that I finally had the inspiration to go to the kitchen and cross "granola bars" off of my to-do list. I did not have most of the ingredients that were listed so I used that recipe as a guide and wanted to share my own version with you. Enjoy!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of coconut oil
1/2 cup of brown rice syrup- or honey. I was just out of honey.
1/3 cup of natural crunchy peanut butter
1 cup of rinsed quinoa
2 cups of whole oats
1/2 cup of ground flax meal
1/2 cup of finely chopped walnuts 
3/4 cup of mini chocolate chips

Heat a skillet on medium heat. Add the rinsed quinoa and stir until it dries out and becomes fragrant. This will take 2-3 minutes while stirring often. Remove from pan and into the mixing bowl. Repeat the toasting of the oats and walnuts and add to the mixing bowl. In the same skillet add the coconut oil, brown rice syrup and peanut butter. It will all melt together and become heavenly! Like pour over ice cream, heavenly! But that's another blog post.... back to this one. Pour that "syrup" over the oats mixture in the mixing bowl to combine.  Press this into a 9x13 greased baking pan. A trick to press sticky stuff into pans is to wet your hands a bit. Then the mixture won't stick to your hands. Bake for 20 minutes and allow to cool before cutting. Make one slice down the center and then smaller slices across to recreate the shape of granola bars.  

I know you will love these as much as we did
In fact, these are back on my to-do list today!  








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