No Bake Breakfast Granola Bars

Don’t let labels define you, okay? These granola bars can be enjoyed at breakfasttime, at lunchtime, at dinnertime, at middleofthenighttime. Whatever your little heart desires. And man, are they good.

If you remember my What I’m Loving post from a few weeks back, I was on the hunt for a perfect granola bar recipe. I was loving Kate’s (from Cookie & Kate), but wanted to come up with my own recipe. This is based on that recipe, with a few twists of my own!

Recipe

You will need:

• 1 3/4 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup almonds
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

To make:

• Line an 8×8 baking pan with parchment paper.
• Pulse the oats in a food processor a few times. You don’t want oat flour, but you want to break them down a bit.
• Remove the oats and add the almonds. Pulse them until they’re as small or large as you want. You can also hand chop these if you aren’t as lazy as I am. I also added a portion of a bar of dark chocolate and pulsed that to avoid dirtying a knife or cutting board.
• Combine the oats, almonds, salt and chocolate in a large mixing bowl.
• Whisk the maple syrup and peanut butter together in a separate bowl. If you keep your peanut butter in the fridge, you can microwave it for 15 seconds at a time until it’s smooth enough to combine with the syrup.
• Add the syrup mixture to the oat mixture and stir to combine! Press evenly into the lined pan.
• Freeze for at least an hour, preferably overnight. Remove and cut into squares. Since these aren’t baked they will fall apart at room temperate, so store them in the freezer. They don’t even need time to defrost before you eat them because they rarely freeze solid. Plus, frozen chunks of dark chocolate are a gift to us all.

That’s it! Do you have a favorite granola bar recipe? This may be perfect for me, but I’m always on the hunt! xo Sara