O' Fun For... tree huggers and preschoolers

...and anyone else so inclined to enjoy some granola goodness. But not you, Duke, so you can stop with the pathetic puppy face.



This last year or so I have been building my kitchen braveness. I have discovered that there really are a bunch of easy things to make that require pretty minimal time and effort. I know, who knew? Bread (thank you oh mighty KitchenAid), croutons, soup, pasta, and now... granola bars. It was quite a shock to learn that these things don't grow straight into their packaging on a special Wal-Mart farm somewhere.



I had tried granola bars before, but the recipe was a bit involved for me and didn't turn out like I wanted. I decided to try again (mainly as a way to distract the kids from destroying one another on this endless snow-bound day). I found what is perhaps the easiest recipe in the world on allrecipes.com, and before I knew it we were basking in oaty goodness.

**The link is having issues, so here is the recipe in a nutshell, or go to "easy granola bars: at allrecipes.com :

3 c. quick cook oats
1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 T. melted butter
4 c. mix ins o' some kind

Mix it all up, press into cookie sheet or 9 x 13 pan, bake 20-25 min, depending on how crunchy you want them, at 350. Cut a few min. after it comes out of the oven- before it cools.

Here are my sidenotes to the recipe:

*I have no idea if my oats were quick or regular, as they are in a huge #10 can marked "oats" and that's all. I think they were regular? Whichever kind was on a huge sale about 3 years ago at Albertsons. That cleared things up, huh.

*After the oats, sw. cond. milk and butter were mixed I put half into another bowl so we could get two different kinds of mix-ins. Half was butterscotch chips/dark chocolate chips, and the other half was golden raisins, tiny chopped pecans, and a little bit more oats.

*Just go ahead and figure the amount of oats, cond. milk, and butter called for plus 4 c. of mix-ins.

*I used a cookie sheet lined with parchment, and then sprayed that with Pam just for the heck of it. After they came out I cut them with a pizza cutter (again sprayed with Pam, because needless grease is just fun) and then lifted the whole parchment sheet onto the counter to finish cooling.

*Once cooled I wrapped them individually in plastic wrap and then put them all in a big ziploc. I got 20 from my batch, but I cut them pretty huge and will cut them smaller next time to make 30. You can make a ton and freeze a bunch if you are feeling ambitious.

And that's it! Not too tricky! Now go on and make some granola bars. Go on now, you know you want to.