Homemade No Bake Chewy Granola Bars

 YUMMY!!

For about a month now I have been using this recipe to home make granola bars instead of spending a ton of money on prepackaged ones.  They are fairly easy to make and allow you to put whatever you like in them.  I found the recipe on Pinterest linked back to My Kitchen Escapades.  She has the recipe listed at the link so I won't bother writing it out here.  I also have it pinned under both "food" and "Pinterest Ideas I have used/done IRL".  The only thing I changed up is I use 1/2 agave and 1/2 honey.  The pure honey was WAY too sweet for us.  Only agave didn't hold the bars together very well.

I did take some pictures of the process though, just so you can see how easy it is.

The ingredients, minus the add ins.

First you combine the dry ingredients.  Oats, crispy rice cereal, coconut.

Melt butter, add honey, brown sugar, salt, and vanilla.  Boil.

Pour over dry ingredients and mix.

Add in your add-ins!  If using chocolate you want to let the mixture cool just a few minutes first.  Tonight I made a pan of mini semi-sweet morsels/chocolate covered raisins for the kids AND a pan of Almond Joy candies for J and I.  This pic is of the "Adult" ones.

Press into a 9x13 pan.  I spread it with my spatula and then use a piece of wax paper and my hands to really press it together.  You want it nice and packed so they don't fall apart when you cut them into bars.  Refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Loosen and dump on a cutting board.  This makes it a lot easier to cut evenly.  Just go slow.

We used a pizza cutter tonight to cut them.  We went with 3 rows of five and I think the size turned out perfect.

Baggie up in order to grab quickly when packing lunch/snacks for the day.

Let me know what you think if you try out this recipe!  And a HUGE thanks to Carole Jones for this amazing recipe!