Easy Homemade Oat Granola Bars Recipe

This Oat Granola Bars recipe is quick, easy and makes the most delicious granola bars. If you’re ever looking for a healthy, mid-morning snack or something to put inside lunch boxes this is just the thing.

They’re a lot like a nutty, fruity flapjack but these are made by toasting the oats before you mix everything else together which gives a wonderful flavour.

This recipe is really simple to follow and will reward you with something wonderful to eat later on. So, hide in the sanctuary of your kitchen and bake up some goodness.

Why you want these Oat Granola Bars

• makes a healthy snack as they’re full of good things; seeds, oats and dried fruits
• taste good – this is a healthy bar that you are going to want to eat
• better for you than a lot of highly processed snacks and you are in control of what’s in this bar
• chewy, sweet and filled with wholesome ingredients

Ingredients in Oat Granola bars Recipe

Sesame Seeds: These luscious little seeds lay claim to all kinds of health benefits and have been used in folk medicine for thousands of years. They add fibre to your diet, may help to lower cholesterol, are a source of protein and may help to lower blood pressure.

Sunflower seeds: These wonderful seeds also supply us with fibre, protein, vitamin E, healthy mono and poly-unsaturated fats, folate and magnesium to name only a few of the good things we get from including them in our diets.

Walnuts: These wrinkly little nuts that squirrels dig up your lawn to hide are similarly fibre and healthy-fat rich. They are a plant source of Omega-3s and wonderfully rich in antioxidants. Apparently, they also promote the health of the bacteria that live in our guts. So, another wonderful addition to food.

Oats: These are rich in vitamins and minerals, such as iron, selenium and magnesium, zinc and B1 to name just a few. They are a good source of antioxidants and fibre. However dry all that sounds, oats are good for you and extremely tasty. (See our homemade Granola Recipe and our Peanut Granola Recipe for ideas. ) I use them in all kinds of dishes, savoury included but for now, let’s talk about these oat granola bars.

Coconut Oil: Despite calling this an oil it is actually a hard fat much to my surprise the first time I bought it.

Dried fruit: This recipe uses dried fruit to add a little sweetness and a little texture. I’ve used a mixture of dried cranberries and dates as I frequently have odd amounts of these dried fruits leftover from making Granola. (See our Homemade Granola Recipe or our Peanut Butter version here.) You may use any dried fruit you have to hand, your favourites or odd bits that get leftover from other cooking adventures.

Muscovado sugar: The light muscovado sugar is present to give sweetness and to add its gorgeous caramel-like flavour.

Cinnamon: A brilliant spice and very well-loved in my home. As a spice, it has been used by humans for thousands upon thousands of years. I use it for its warming aromatic flavouring and that is its job in these Granola Oat bars.

The complete recipe with exact amounts is listed below.

How to make Oat Granola bars

These are extremely easy to make. This is a quick walkthrough of what you need to do.

The oats and nuts are toasted in the oven for a few minutes allowing all the flavours to blossom. These are then mixed with all the other ingredients. It’s really simple.

Start by lining an 18cm by 25cm tin with baking parchment. This makes clearing up easier and helps to get the granola bars out once they’ve baked and cooled.

Preheat the oven and whilst that’s happening, measure out the ingredients.

Once your oven is at temperature, place the oats and seeds on a baking tray, and place them in the oven for around 5 minutes. Then take it out, mix the ingredients around a little bit and put it back into the oven for a further five minutes. We’re not looking to colour anything here.

Use a large saucepan (it needs to accommodate the oats and nuts later), and melt the coconut oil or butter. Add in the muscovado sugar and maple/golden syrup. Stir as you do this and once it has all melted, take it off the heat.

Carefully tip the toasted oats and nuts into the saucepan.

Add in the cinnamon and dried fruit and stir until everything is coated with the syrup mixture. Tip this into the prepared tin, pushing the mixture into the corners and smoothing down gently.

Put this into the oven and bake for approximately 30 minutes. Keep an eye on it, you are looking for a soft golden brown colour.

At the end of the 30 minutes, take the tin out of the oven and leave it to cool. Don’t they smell good?

Once cool, slice into twelve generously sized portions or more, smaller ones.

These will keep well in a tin for three or four days but I never find that they last that long once released into the wild.

Make them Different

There are many ways that you can change these Toasted Oat Granola bars, using chocolate chips instead of dried fruit works brilliantly. You can also try adding in 100g of chocolate chips as well as the fruit.

A particularly wonderful combination is ginger, orange and chocolate. Yum! To make this version, omit the cinnamon and use 1 tsp of ground ginger and the grated zest of an orange. Once the Toasted Oat bars have cooled, melt a 150g bar of your favourite chocolate, spread it on the top and leave to set. Delicious.

Make these gluten-free

Use certified gluten-free oats and these flapjack style oat bars will be perfect for you.

Storing these Oaty bars

Once cooled from cooking these Toasted Oat Granola bars will store well in an air-tight container for up to 4 or 5 days. Bet they don’t last that long once your family finds them.

I hope that these become as much a favourite in your home as they are in mine. Please share any thoughts or photos, I’d love to see what you’ve been making.

If you like these… then you might like…

• No-bake granola bars with hazelnuts
• Maple Syrup Flapjacks

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