These granola bars are so ridiculously easy and crazy delicious. I call them holy delicious granola bars because they’re actually pretty virtuous despite being a yummy and filling snack!

These bars are based on ‘Oat Couture granola bars’ by Lorraine Pascal from her Home Cooking Made Easy book. Her original recipe calls for 200g sugar, which just made my teeth hurt in the first version of these bars! This one still tastes sweet but is much healthier!

  • 125g unsalted butter
  • 75g soft light brown sugar
  • 750g box of muesli, of your choice – I used Sainsburys fruit and nut muesli. You want to make sure the one you choose has plenty of the nuts, dried fruit and seeds that you like in it
  • 100g pecans, almonds or a mixture of the two
  • maple syrup or honey

This recipe was easy to begin with but I made it even easier by using ready made muesli rather than its components. If you make these on a lazy Sunday afternoon, three great things will happen to you

  1. Your house will smell amazing while they’re baking
  2. You will have perfectly healthy and also delicious afternoon snacks for the whole work week
  3. You will have yummy leftover (basically granola) crumbs which you can scoop up with your hands and eat, or use to top your breakfast yoghurt

To start, preheat your oven to 140 degrees / gas mark 4 and melt the butter in a saucepan with the sugar. Bring the mix to a gentle boil until the mixture gets thicker – to about the consistency of custard (it will take about ten minutes). Transfer to a heat proof bowl and let the mixture cool. Meanwhile, toast your nuts for a few minutes until they start to colour and smell nice – make sure you don’t leave them in too long or they’ll become bitter.

Next, add your toasted nuts and muesli mix to the butter sugar mix and mix mix mix. Add maple syrup or honey to taste until the mixture is sticky – I also added a pinch of cinnamon which tasted great, and nutmeg, cardamon or a dash of ginger would taste great too!

Empty your delicious mixture into a greased brownie tin and bake for around 45-60 minutes or until they turn a golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool thoroughly before cutting into squares. If you wrap the individual squares in tin foil, they’ll keep for around a week.

I can’t stop thinking about how amazing these would taste with chocolate chips………