Granola Goodness

I've had a productive evening - not only did I do a load of laundry and some homework, but I also whipped up some homemade granola bars - yum!

I found the recipe on allrecipes.com - don't you just love this site?

Ingredients:

2-ish cups rolled oats
3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I cut this down to 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup wheat germ (I substituted 1/4 cup flax seed)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup raisins (I cut this down to about 1/8 cup and also added mini choc chips)
3/4 teaspoon salt (I cut this to 1/2 tsp)
1/2 cup honey
1 egg beaten
1/2 cup oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Generously grease a 9x13 inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, mix together the oats, brown sugar, wheat germ, cinnamon, flour, raisins, chocolate chips and salt. Make a well in the center, and pour in the honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well using your hands. Pat the mixture evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 30-35 minutes in the preheated oven, until the bars begin to turn golden at the edges. Cool for 5 minutes, then cut into bars while still warm. Do not allow bars to cool completely before cutting otherwise they will get hard and you'll be cursing yourself as you try and cut the little buggers into pieces.

This recipe is a good one for experimenting - lots of opportunities to make substitutes or additions. Next time I may try added chopped almond or banana chips, and maybe use some cocoa nibs instead of chocolate chips. Also, thinking about switching to whole wheat flour, but gotta kill the what seems to be life time supply of all purpose flour before I go buying new stuff.