granola bars

I'm trying to be good*.  I could have made those sugar cookies I've been sitting on for a while, but I decided I'd try my hand at granola bars because those are healthy, right?  Chocolate chip granola bars?  I've had a jar of honey from my friend's farm sitting in my cupboard for several years now.  The internet tells me that honey doesn't ever go bad, and if I can't trust the internet, who can I trust?  Unfortunately, the honey had solidified into a crystal-ly mass in the mason jar.  The internet also tells me that if I soak the jar in boiling water it will return to its original form.

Photo from Jackie Norris

So I boil the jar in a medium-sized pot of water and attempt to mix the rest of the ingredients together while I wait.  All goes well until I hit the brown sugar and I remember that my brown sugar has also solidified into a hard mass.  For this, I have no internet tips.  I probably could have looked something up, but my hands were all sticky and washing them off proved to be too much effort.  So I decided to dampen the brown sugar block in water and then use a cheese grater to  break it apart.  This was a great idea in theory.  In practice, it basically turned into brown sugar goop.  Between the goop and the hot honey, these granola bars are a little on the, uh, chewy/moist side.

* No, I'm not.  I just ate pumpkin cheesecake directly out of the box with a fork.

Granola Bars
recipe from Jackie Norris

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed

1 t. ground cinnamon

1 cup flour

3/4 cup chocolate chips (or dried fruit)

3/4 t. salt

1/2 cup honey

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup canola oil

2 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350. Either line a 9×13 pan with parchment or grease thoroughly. In a large bowl, mix oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, flour, chocolate chips and salt. Add remaining ingredients, gently mixing it all together. Press the mixture into prepared pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.