You Pinspire Me
We don’t do much in the way of summer vacations in our family, but we love day trips – loading the bikes up in the trailer, driving into Toronto, and taking the ferry across to spend the day on the Toronto Islands, or spending a few hours touring the Grand River in Brian’s 12′ aluminum fishing boat. Easy & healthy food is really important for me for those days – I have enough to pack up without having to spend hours upon hours preparing food to bring along – but I don’t want to be eating prepackaged mass produced food that’s either low on nutrition or high on price all summer, either.
This recipe for granola bars is one of my new favourites – I make up a batch about once a week, wrap them in parchment paper, and store them in the fridge. I fill them with all sorts of goodies that have lots of nutritional value and help keep us satiated for a longer period of time. When I’m packing up the cooler to go, they’re easy to grab and toss in. The only thing that I would caution is to make sure they’re kept in the cooler bag during the day when you’re out & about because since they’re held together with honey & peanut butter, they do tend to ‘melt’ and fall apart pretty quickly in the hot sun.
- 1/2 cup natural peanut butter or almond butter
- 1/3 cup honey
- 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 1 1/2 cups Oats (regular - not instant or quick)
- 1 1/2 cups Chex Honey Nut cereal
- 1/4 cup hemp hearts
- 2 Tbsp chia seeds
- 2 Tbsp slivered almonds, chopped
- 1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped
- 1/8 tsp salt
- Heat peanut or almond butter, coconut oil, and honey in a small sauce pan over low heat, stirring constantly, until melted. Remove from heat & cool to room temperature.
- Measure Chex cereal into a strong bag, like a clean milk bag. Clip the end close, and hand over to your toddler for smushing.
- Add all dry ingredients to a large mixing bowl, pour the cooled honey mixture over, and mix well.
- Line an 8x8 dish with parchment paper, pour the mixture in, and flatten evenly.
- Cool in the fridge for 30-60 minutes, the remove from dish, place on a cutting board, and cut into granola-bar-sized strips.
- I like to wrap each bar right away in parchment paper so that they're really easy on-the-go or last-minute snacks for us for day trips or just when heading to the park.
- Store in the fridge.
Disclosure: I am part of the Summer With Chex Blogger Campaign with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.
Jenn vanOosten
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These look really good. I’m trying to ditch a lot the pre-packaged snacks that I buy for the kids, so this fits the bill. Thanks for sharing!
I got to try these yesterday and they were amazing!
Glad you enjoyed them, Daniele! 🙂 They’ll make a great addition to Peter’s lunch! 😉
This is super fabulous. We are vegan, so I’ll find a way to substitute the honey. I am like the granola monster but I don’t love baking, so this is perfect for me.
What a great recipe! I really would like to try out chia seeds but sadly can’t get them anywhere here. Hope they will start to sell them one day.
That sounds amazing! I love things like this that I can just grab and go!
I absolutely love this idea! These look delicious and I’m a huge fan of chia! I’m going to pin this recipe for later 🙂
yum, im gonna go make these now
We love day trips. That’s all we really take. I’ve never had hemp hearts. I’ll have to try this.
These actually look pretty easy to make and they look delicious!
These look healthy and easy to make! I want to give it a try!
Hi,
These look yummy, think my kids will love them x
These look good. I heard that chia seeds were healthy and good for you, but I had no idea about how much calcium they possessed…now I am more motivated to actively use these seeds.
I buy these all the time.. it would be good to make my own and save some money!
These look so easy I usually buy ours but would love to just make my own!