Bonus Recipe: Homemade Granola Bars

I may have mentioned that I came home from my local co-op with 30 cups of rolled oats earlier this week. I used about 1/3 of them on my quadruple batch of Banana-Nut Granola, but that still left me with a lot of oats. 

I'm not a fan of oatmeal, so I had to figure out something to do with them. I vaguely remembered a post on TheKitchn explaining how to make homemade granola bars, so I thought, why not? The post, written by TheKitchn's recipe editor, Emma Christiansen, provides a template for making homemade granola bars, as well as a few fun recipe suggestions. I made her Cherry-Almond Dark Chocolate bars and Chocolate Chip Peanut bars and wrapped them up and sent them over to my niece who just started 4th grade as snacks for during or after the school day. Then I started brainstorming. I decided I would create Mocha Coconut Granola Bars and White Chocolate Apple Pie Granola bars!

Organic Banana-Nut Granola

Almost a year ago, I stopped eating foods with added sugar and most things that are very processed. Not eating processed foods isn't too hard, for someone who loves to cook. The no added sugar thing? A little more difficult, because there is added, excessive sugar in EVERYTHING. So I stopped eating fruit flavored yogurts, quit my dessert addiction cold turkey, and started drinking my morning coffee with milk only.

I still occasionally indulge in a small portion of dessert (I requested my mom make me a chocolate-red wine cake with white chocolate buttercream for my birthday earlier this month!), and definitely still cook with small amounts of natural sweeteners.

One of my favorite slightly sweet recipes lately has been banana-nut granola. Made with just a little honey and mashed, super ripe bananas, it has the perfect balance of nutty and mildly sweet flavors - and is perfect with a little almond milk as cold cereal or tossed into some plain yogurt with fruit for breakfast in the morning. The last (double) batch I made went in less than two weeks because everyone loved it so much, so this time I went all out and made a QUADRUPLE batch.