Crunchy Granola Bars

If you're not friends with me on Facebook, you probably don't know how entirely my family has fallen in love with No-Bake Nut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola Bars.  I was seriously considering the merits of starting our own beehive to keep up with the honey consumption.  These things are so very delicious.

But Hubby has always preferred crunchy granola bars to chewy.  I don't understand why, but I embrace it, because that leaves more chewy granola bars for me.  In the interests of, well, saving money, while pleasing my husband (and preserving chewy bars for me--it's a win-win-win), I decided to try this recipe for Crunchy Granola Bars.

They are really good.  According to Hubby, these are better.  According to me, they're not.  So I thought I'd share the recipe with you--you can decide the crunchy or chewy debate for yourself--both are delicious.



Click here for the Crunchy Granola Bar recipe

A few notes:

• Do toast the oats--it takes a little extra time, but the payoff is in deeper flavor complexity.  So good.
• I used a combination of walnuts, pecans, and almonds.  If you don't like nuts, leave them out, but add in more oats to keep the ratio of wet to dry ingredients about the same.
• I used the pan size specified in the recipe, and my bars were a little too thick for our liking.  Next time, I'll use two smaller pans to spread the mixture a little thinner.
• Do be sure to cut the bars while they're still warm--it will be impossible to get bars if you wait until the mixture is cool.  You'll end up with granola cereal, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but seems like if you're making granola bars, you probably want them to be in a bar shape, right?