Genius Pick-me-up: Granola bars

 It is no secret that i enjoy a snack with Oreo while mindlessly recounting office stories to her when i get back home after a fricking long and borderline murderous cab ride after office. And that snack is important to us. It's mostly something that does not go down well with my ethics of 'minimum junk food'. So to ease that conscience and without compromising on my sweet tooth craving, i put together some of my favorite ingredients and made a truly genius piece of pick-me-up. and named them granola bars. They already exist in the supermarkets aisles here in India BUT as it turns out, i do not like them. They are saccharine sweet, sticky for the wrong reasons and if i did'nt mention it already, excessively sweet! Not my kinda granola bar. Hence my own version.

My own version is egg-less (this is a first! Yay!), AP flour free (also a first, yay yay!), got goodies like almonds and honey plus it's got minimal sugar and butter. Just mix 'em up and pop into the oven. Really. The simplicity will blow you away. The result, better still! Thought balloon: Maybe i'm getting on the 'eat healthier at-least-once-in-a-while' bandwagon. Bet my mom will be thrilled.

The dry ingredients:
Oat flour - 1/3 cup*
Oats - 3/4 cup
Crushed Corn flakes - 1/4 cup
Puffed rice: 1/8 cup
Slivered Almonds: 1/3 cup
Whole almonds: 1/4 cup
Raisins: 1/4 cup
Chocolate chips: a handful
Salt: 1/4 teaspoon
Cinnamon powder: 1/8 teaspoon
*You can make the oat flour by simply blitzing in a mixer 1/3 cup oats for less than half a minute! :)

Not so dry ingredients:
Brown sugar: 1/4 cup
White sugar: 1/4 cup
Honey: 1/4 cup
Butter: 3 tablespoons
Water: 2 tablespoons

How you go about it:

Preheat the oven to 170 C.

Line a tin with aluminium foil and make sure the sides overhang. Butter the foil.

Melt the sugars and butter over a low flame. Add in the honey and water. Take it off the flame once the mixture starts to boil. Keep aside.

Sift together all the dry ingredients.

Make a well in the middle of the ingredients, add the sugar/honey syrup into the dry ingredients and mix as well as you can so that you wet all the dry ingredients and everything is evenly dispersed.

Bake in a preheated oven for 30 min at 165 C or till the colors changes to brown. Pop out of the oven and let cool completely in the tin. Remove from the tin using the overhanging paper on the sides. Cut into even bars and enjoy!

P.S: The target audience here is the people who make the lousy granola bars for the supermarkets, people who love to eat on the go, people who love to snack on something while doing chores, people who pack snack boxes for little ones or selves, to be mothers, already mothers, fathers, bosses, teachers, grand folks... you get the drift right. It tastes really good as is, with cold yogurt or with hot milk, when you are pooped, after a gym workout, a brain numbing meeting or after giving your dog a bath. It's also a great thing to cut through the monotony of deep fried goodies. The possibilities are endless, truly!