Granola Bars

When you work hard, you need good food. I usually don't survive the day without little snacks between the meals. Granola bars are super and tasty energy boosters. It's not the first time that I made granola bars myself - remember these?! Here comes a version for the non-addicts. They are quick and easy to make and you can also modify the ingredients. Just pay attention that you stick to the ratio of dry and wet ingredients. You can use other seeds such as sunflower or pumpkin... omit the dried fruit if you don't like it and add chocolate chunks instead... Create granola bars according to your taste.

Recipe
(slightly adapted from: Geschenkideen aus der Küche by Nicky Stich)

100g sliced almonds
50g desiccated coconut
75g rolled oats
50g butter
50g brown sugar
50g maple syrup
1 tablespoon honey
50g dried fruit, diced (I used raisins and apricots)
1 pinch of sea salt
50g rice krispies (I didn't have any, so I used 50g of hazelnuts, roughly chopped)

Preheat the oven to 175°C and line a baking tray with parchment paper. Mix almonds, coconut, oats and hazelnuts and scatter onto the tray. Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes until lightly brown. Mix them with wooden ladle a few times while baking so that they brown evenly.

Melt butter, sugar, maple syrup and honey in a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved and you have a thick brown syrup.

Line a square baking tin with parchment paper (about 22x30cm, I used my brownie tin, a 28cm diameter springform pan will, according to the recipe, also do). In a large bowl, mix the nut and oat mixture with the salt and the dried fruit. Pour the syrup over your mixture and mix thoroughly.

With moistened hands or with a large ladle, press your batter into the baking tin until its evenly flattened. Put the tin into the refridgerator for about half an hour so that the mixture gets firm.

With the help of the overlapping parchment paper, lift the firm mixture out of the tin and cut into bars with a large knife. Store in an airtight container in a cold place. Keeps up to two weeks.