Granola Bars!

The first time I made this was w/ Bernice at Char's house, and they were good! So good I got a copy of the recipe right then, and then haven't tried making it since. Until tonight. We bought a large thing of oats awhile back and haven't used much of it except on no-bake cookies, which are great, but definitely not on the healthy side so I went looking around the internet for something to use it up on. Turns out there's also a copy of this recipe on allrecipes.com which totally reminded me about this recipe and inspired me to finally get around to making them. And on the plus side, we had practically all the ingredients for it, just had to go out for the wheat germ.

Anyways, while I was looking around on the internet I saw an awesome photo of someone using a muffin pan to make pre-portioned pieces. Thought that was definitely a GREAT idea as I really hate cutting bars - it's messy and I forget about them and they end up too hard to cut etc. I was determined to make a whole batch  fit in 24 cups of our mini-muffin pan and managed to do it... But unfortunately I packed it in way too tight and we managed to forget to set a timer for it, so I really have no idea how long they were in there for for sure, but we're thinking it was probably close to the recommended half an hour. Which ended up being definitely WAAAAAAY TOO LONG! They were really dense and kinda hard. Still edible and flavorful, but not really enjoyable to eat. On the upside though, they really were the perfect size. So next time, no packing it in and probably will cook 10 - 15 min. only. We figured on this batch, if they start getting too dry we'll just crumble it in a bowl and have it with milk and eat it like cereal! Kinda fun having pre-portioned sizes like that. 

INGREDIENTS:
Dry Ingredients:

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar (Try with just 1/2 cup next time?)
• 1/2 cup wheat germ
• 3/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 tsp. salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup honey (Increase to 1/3 to compensate for less sugar?)
• 1 egg - beaten
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tsp vanilla

OPTIONAL MIX-INS:

• 3/4 cup raisins or 1/2 cup craisins
• 1/3 cup coconut
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup peanut butter

PREPARATION:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13 pan. Mix oats, brown sugar, wheat germ, cinnamon, flour, mix-ins and salt. Make well in center and pour in honey, egg, oil and vanilla. Mix well and pat into pan. Bake 30-35 min. Cool for 5 min. Cut into bars and serve.