Granola Bars: lunch a porter

This is the second issue of my cooperation with Mettiamocilatesta.it, in search of lunch boxes and snack, paying attention to ingredients’ quality and cooking process simplicity. This is our saying: EAT QUALITY FOOD, EAT WITH CREATIVITY, as previously stated in the other recipe, rice with vegetables. Mettiamocilatesta.it is having a great success so it’s time to give quality food to our guys, they deserve it!

If you don’t have time to sit down and have a proper meal and the only thing you can do is drive your teeth into a snack, don’t be pleased with a snack full of preservatives, artificial food dyes, sugar and fats. Our quest is to find something healthy, a snack of good quality and amazing taste: we’re going to make our own granola bars, a way better than the snacks you can buy in most of the shops.

Last week I found on Meeta’s blog, Whatsforluchhoney, a recipe for granola bars, love at first sight again, and after a stormy raid  in our local organic shop, I finally made my granola bars with cranberries and cherries, making a few changes on the original recipe.

Ingredients:

• oat flakes, 100 gr
• rice flakes, 50 gr
• wheat germ, 50 gr
• sunflower seeds, 100 gr
• sesame seed, 50 gr
• hazelnuts, 60 gr
• dried fruit, 120 gr (cherries+ cranberries + raisins)
• cane sugar, 100 gr
• honey*, 3 tablespoons
• butter, 100 gr
• vanilla salt, 1 teaspoon

(*) I used linden and blackberry bush honey.

Preheat oven to 160°C and toast cereals and seeds together with hazelnuts for about 10 minutes. In the meanwhile, melt butter with sugar and honey, stirring frequently: you’ll obtain a thick, with a shade of dark amber and a yummy smell hard to resist (but, believe me, resisit! If you dip a finger into this syrup you’ll burn yourself, Juls’ word!)

Remove cereals and seeds from the oven, chop roughly hazelnuts and add dried fruits and a teaspoon of vanilla salt to the syrup: stir well.

Line a baking tin with baking paper (I crumpled up a paper sheet and put it under runing water, then I wringed it out and lined the baking tin with it), tip the mixture into it and press down. Help yourself with a wet baking paper and press it till a 1 cm thickness.

Bake for about 30 minutes. Let it cool down completely before removing it from the baking tin since it will be still quite soft just removed from the oven. Slice and cut into bars.

Wrap each bar into baking paper and store into an airtight container. Grab a bar in the morning and face with energy your working day. The bar is crunchy thanks to cereals and honey, while dried fruit makes it  chewy and sweet: a perfect mix. I’ll try other versions for sure: with dark or with chocolate, dried apricots, poppy seeds, candied lemon…

They give their best the day after – ask to my father – so try to save a few of them!