Homemade Granola

My friend and I decided to make sugar and oil-free granola bars since store-bought ones are usually way too sweet in general. We used Alton Brown's recipe we found on foodnetwork.com but left out all the butter and sugar. Leaving out the butter made everything hard to stick together, so it ended up being granola crumble instead of bars. Although it didn't exactly turn out as planned, it made a great hiking snack (almost like trail mix), and is also perfect for yogurt parfaits!

Ingredients

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1/4 cup hot water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup chopped, dried fruit (any fruit is fine; we used mangoes, cranberries, raisins)



Great for on-the-go. 

• 1/3 cup nuts, toasted or not (any nut is fine; we used toasted almonds)

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Oil a 9x9" baking pan or glass container.
3. Spread oats out onto a baking sheet and place into preheated oven for about 15 minutes, or until toasted/aromatic. If you have un-toasted nuts and want to toast them, place them into the oven along with the oats.
4. After taking out the oats, lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees F.
5. Meanwhile, combine the honey, water, and vanilla.
6. In a separate bowl, mix together the dried fruits and nuts.
7. Finally, mix everything together and pour into prepared pan. Press it down to cover the sides of the pan.
8. Bake for 25 minutes. Let it cool completely before shaking it out of the pan. If you don't, it might fall apart into even smaller pieces.



End result!