Strawberry Granola Bars

5 ingredients and you probably have 4 of them

This week’s latest Kids Kraze in my house was strawberry granola bars. The store-bought “organic” variety had 13 ingredients including seed oils & natural flavorings. Look I’m not against seed oils, but I do think limiting them or swapping for other alternatives probably isn’t a bad idea. Especially when the swap out in this case is objectively better for you. The sugar is one of my main concerns with kids snacks, this one had 9g per bar. It is from cane sugar and cane syrup which don’t bother me because I’ve visited cane sugar production facilities in person several times in my life down near Okeechobee, FL. 9g per bar is still alot. After I made and tested these, they’re darn good. In an effort to add some “wow factor” and ensure my kids would be interested in trying Dad’s homemade bars, I did add about 3g worth of sugar via cake icing in a squiggle pattern on top. Now that they are familiar with the bar and like them, I can work on removing or changing that but let’s be real, I probably won’t. I’ll just ice them. I’d rather them eat it than not and if it takes a pinch of sugary red icing so be it.

Another thing is cost, at the store these cost $0.85/ea.

Homemade (not counting icing) $0.45/ea, about half the price. You can cut these how you like, I made 16 pretty thin size bars, about the size of a steak fry.

If you can mix things together, you can make these. No cooking involved. They set up in the fridge for a few hours then cut them into whatever shape bar you want.

RECIPE: Strawberry Granola Bars

1 Cup Peanut Butter

1/3 Cup Honey

1 TSP Vanilla Extract

2 1/2 Cups Old-Fashioned Oats

1/3 Cup Freeze Dried Strawberries

In a medium bowl, combine everything but the oats and strawberries until mixed well.

Add the oats and strawberries and incorporate. I used gloved hands and it works way faster than a utensil.

Put parchment paper into an 8x8 baking dish.

Press the mixture really well into the dish. Put another piece of parchment on top if you need help pressing it down into the corners and sides

Refrigerate for 2 hours to let them set up, remove and cut into bars.

Be sure to keep these in the fridge to maintain them as bars. There’s nothing that will “go bad” if left out but the peanut butter will warm up and turn everything to mush.

You can 100% swap strawberries for other freeze dried fruit and the peanut butter for a different nut butter. I have ideas to try PB2 as well as subbing the honey for maple syrup but have not yet so if you experiment let me know how it turned out!