Granola Peanut Butter Bars

I am not going to tell you how many of these bars I can eat in one sitting. You simply wouldn't believe. But that  just proves how good they are. When I made them first, I said to myself that I will never eat store bought bars again. Homemade are so much better! However, after I ate half of the batch at once, I changed my mind. It's just too dangerous. I know, I know. But I just CAN'T eat only one... Really, I wish I could.

As you already know, I am a huge fan of oats, dried fruits (especially cranberries and apples), peanut butter and brown sugar. So it's not surprising that I loved them so much. Feel free to add your favorite dried fruits instead of apples, pears, apricots and cranberries. You can also replace peanut butter with cashew or almond butter. Improvise! 

Granola Bars:

100g dried cranberries

160g dried fruits (apples, apricots, pears)

½ cup toasted chopped peanuts

1 ½ cup quick cooking oats

1 cup rolled oats

5 tbsp brown sugar

6 tbsp water

3 tbsp honey

4 tbsp homemade peanut butter (+ 1tsp honey)

1) Chop the dried fruits into small chunks and mix together.

2) In another bowl, mix together the oats and chopped peanuts. Add in the dried fruits.

3) In a food processor, grind the peanuts until they start to liquefy. Add 1 tsp of honey and mix for for some more minutes until the consistency resembles peanut butter.

4) In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, combine together brown sugar, water and honey. Stir until sugar is completely dissolved and small bubbles start appearing in the edges of saucepan. Reduce heat to low and add peanut butter. Mix until combined. Turn off the heat and let cool a little bit.

5) Pour the syrup over the oat mixture and mix very well. Lay a piece of parchment paper over a bottom of a 20x20cm square pan. Pour the mixture into prepared pan and press it to the bottom with your fingers.

6) Let stand for couple hours and then cut into bars.