These bars, which are a blend of granola, cereal, and energy bars, are Mike’s favorites. You can customize these by adding fruits, nuts, seeds, chocolate, etc. to suit your tastes. Additionally, you can choose to use just natural or organic components, depending on your choice.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 10 mins |
| Additional Time: | 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 24 bars |
Ingredients
- parchment paper
- cooking spray
- ¾ cup chopped dark chocolate
- 2 cups rolled oats
- ¼ cup wheat germ
- ¼ cup flax seeds
- 1 cup crispy rice cereal
- 1 cup cornflake crumbs
- ¾ cup chopped smoke-flavored almonds
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ cup honey
- ½ cup creamy peanut butter
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons agave nectar
- 1 tablespoon canola oil
- ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Line a 9×13-inch baking dish with parchment paper and spray with cooking spray. Spread chocolate evenly over prepared baking dish.
- Toast oats, wheat germ, and flax seed in a non-stick skillet over medium heat, stirring frequently until oats are lightly golden and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Transfer oat mixture to a large bowl and stir in crispy rice cereal, cornflake crumbs, almonds, and salt.
- Heat honey, peanut butter, brown sugar, agave nectar, canola oil, and cinnamon in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook and stir until mixture begins to bubble, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract. Pour peanut butter mixture over cereal mixture; gently stir until well mixed.
- Spread peanut butter-cereal mixture into the baking dish. Place another sheet of parchment over the mixture and firmly press into the dish until even. Allow to completely cool before removing from baking dish and slicing.
- Can use quick or old fashioned oats. You can skip the toasting step, but I find it adds a great flavor.
- Can use either honey or Karo(R), or any combination of the two.
- Can use maple syrup in place of the agave, if that is more your taste.
- Instead of almonds and chocolate, can use 1 1/2 cups of any mixture of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, or chips. Anything that might melt, should be sprinkled along the bottom of pan, otherwise it just melts and blends in when adding the peanut butter mix. Everything else can be mixed in the with oats.
Reviews
I made several changes to work with ingredients I had, and to make this paleo, but stuck with the basic idea of this recipe. Mainly I was seeking a basic “Granola bar,” and this is it! I will make this again and add chopped dried fruits to it. I like how well it holds together in a bar. I left out the brown sugar and agave and used just the honey plus 3 tablespoons maple syrup and it was plenty sweet enough for our tastes.
Best cereal bars iv ever had!
I didn’t like these at all – they had a bad aftertaste – I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth until I brushed my teeth. Woul not make this again.
Love this recipe. Made them in greased muffin pans, and refrigerated to set. They came out as little pucks. Perfect for hiking and a good replacement for Clif bars.
Made these a couple times. Very very good! The first time made exactly and they were perfect. Another time I omitted the nuts and added craisins, really good. Another time added peanut butter chips to the chocolate pieces and toasted coconut to the oat mixture. Excellent recipe as is, but nice one to change also.
Made it just as the recipe describes. Very tasty. Today I am going to make another batch and substitute left over grain from beer making instead of the rolled oats and also increase the binder to make them a little more chewy.
This was a very good base recipe and easily customizable. I made as is but next time I will omit the cinnamon. Even though I added slightly less than called for, it was still too much for me & took away from the peanut butter & chocolate. I will also add more binder & bake this for about 5 to 7 minutes, because it crumbled. Thanks for submitting.
I love the adaptability of this recipe. Will be making this again and again with more variations. So glad I stumpled upon it 🙂
I’m on the go all day and was looking for a granola bar that would give me quick energy. This recipe is amazing! Very simple to make, and the chocolate is a little treat. Next time I will probably add more fruit (whether that be raisins or dried cherries, etc) and use a darker chocolate (like an 85%+) to balance out the sweetness of the bar. Overall very happy!
A very adaptable recipe…however, I couldn’t imagine putting 1/4 flax seed into it…that would be all it would taste like! 1 Tbsp was plenty to have the flavor and crunch. Grape Nuts were good in it too.
Of course I love it, it’s mine. I usually use homemade peanut butter, which has little to no sweetener, so if you are using store bought (even natural) you might want to cut back on the other sweeteners. Also, some reviewers commented on only boiling the peanut butter mixture 2 minutes, I don’t even boil it that long, I just let it come up to a boil, which takes 3-5 minutes from when I turn the heat on. Love that everyone is playing with the ingredients, change up the cereal, grains, nuts, seeds, chips etc. The peanut butter chocolate is our favorite and I always use the PB, sometimes with the almonds, sometimes more peanuts. I have done white chocolate & almonds. I’ve used golden Graham’s for the cereal, and replace the nuts with mini marshmallow for a s’more like bar. Did pecans & a white chocolate & cinnamon chip mix. Enjoy your creations.
This was delicious and definitely a recipe keeper. My son eats through granola bars like you wouldn’t believe and now I can control the processed food and sugar by making them myself. Only made minor changes because I didn’t have rice cereal so I doubled the flakes. Added sunflower seeds and used natural peanut butter. May try to reduce the brown sugar by half next time because they are sweet for my taste but not a huge deal breaker. Agree with the previous review to only boil for about 2 minutes.
This was a wonderful recipe. Instead of using the crispy rice cereal and corn flakes I used what I had, Life cereal (crunched up), and Honey bunches of oats. And instead of wheat germ I used Oat Bran. It really turned out great! When you boil the honey and peanut butter mixture only let it boil for about 2 minutes. My batch got a little crunchy instead of chewy. But this is a great recipe where you can interchange some of the ingredients.
Wow!! I feel Honored to be the First to review your recipe!! These are Prefect in every way! omg!! They taste AMAZING! the measurements are spot on!No need to make any adjustments Outstanding!!!