photo by: FoodByJenn

Last October I visited a Bed & Breakfast in Vermont where the owner treated me one morning to a delightful yogurt parfait with his homemade granola.  Ever since, I have been determined to create my own tasty granola.  After much trial and error, and more than a few recipes, I decided what I really wanted to make was a granola bar that I could either toss into my purse to eat on the run or crumble into a greek style yogurt when I had the time to sit and eat breakfast or lunch.  In the end, I modified Ina Garten’s “Homemade Granola Bars” recipe which you can find here. This is a wonderful recipe just as it is written (after all, would the Barefoot Contessa let us down? I think not!).  I tweaked the recipe because I wanted to incorporate quinoa flakes into the bars for a protein bump up, sesame seeds for added flavor, and dried tart cherries for a little pucker. 

My modifications:

I swapped:

1 cup of oatmeal with 1 cup of quinoa flakes

1/2 cup of wheat germ  with 1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/3 cup honey with 1/3 cup unsulphured molasses

1/2 cup pitted dates + 1/2 cup dried apricots with 1 cup dried tart cherries

I added:

2 Tablespoons of light brown sugar

2 teaspoons of Saigon cinnamon

Before toasting, I pulsed the dry ingredients in my food processor.  I also did a slightly finer than rough chop on the dried fruit with a large chef knife.  Other than that, I followed the directions as written. Depending on how you choose to cut the end product, the recipe will yield 12 to 24 bars – I like smaller bars so I cut 24 portions from this recipe.

A selection of my hardware used: KitchenArt “Adjust a Cup” (immensely helpful for measuring and dispensing sticky or thick ingredients-the inner plunger scrapes the ingredients cleanly away from the cup); Cuisinart Prep 9 9 cup food processor; Farberware Millenium saucier and whisk; Pyrex oblong baking dish; R.H. Forschner 10″ Chef Knife .