Homemade Chewy Granola Bars

I don’t know about you but I am getting very tired of finding ridiculous amounts of sugar, seed oils and artificial crap in everything store bought. I don’t enjoy feeding granola bars to my girls because I know that half or more of the ingredients in them are sometimes even impossible to pronounce!

I was on a mission to make a healthy, no processed sugar, no butter yet delicious granola bar. You think it was easy? It was not. So happy to share that after testing no joke like 8 versions of these bars I finally nailed it.

Not only are they delicious but the texture is exactly what I wanted. They are crunchy yet compact and chewy but not in a gummy bear kind of way, instead they are chewy in a soft and tender way. It won’t hurt your jaw to chew on these!

These bars are also loaded with healthy ingredients all of which we can read and pronounce HA! Flax seeds, sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, chia seeds, oats, almond butter, coconut oil, dates, vanilla extract, almond milk, salt and honey. That’s it! .

Enough of the sales pitch though, lets make these delicious bars. Let’s go!

Here is how I made these Homemade Granola Bars:

Preheat the oven to 350º.

In a small sauce pan, bring the water to a boil.

In a bowl, pour the water over the dates and let sit for 10-15 minutes.

Tip! This process of rehydrating the dates is called reconstitution. It works on all dried fruits and helps them get soft and plump.

While the dates are doing their thing, in a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper, add the oats, hemps seeds, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and chia seeds.

Bake these dry ingredients for 10 minutes. Halfway through baking, give them a quick shimmy shake to help them toast evenly.

Once the dry ingredients are done baking, remove them from the oven and let them cool completely to room temperature.

While the oat mixture is cooling, let’s work on the date caramel.

Drain the dates and discard the water.

Put the dates in a food processor, and add the vanilla extract, a pinch of salt and the almond milk.

Process the dates until the mixture is soft and it resembles a thick caramel.

Tip! This caramel can be left to be chunky if you’d like to have bits of dates throughout the bar, I however recommend to make it creamy because it will help the ingredients stick together better.

In a small sauce pan, pour the honey, the almond butter and the coconut oil.

Mix well and bring to a boil. As soon as the first few bubbles start forming, stir the mixture nonstop.

Tip! If the mixture gets too hot, lift it from the heat while stirring to avoid it to burn on the bottom of the saucepan.

Let the mixture boil for around 2 minutes all while stirring. The mixture will thicken a bit and that is when you know it’s ready.

In a large bowl, pour the coconut oil, honey mixture and add the date caramel. Combine well.

Add the oats and seeds mixture to the date caramel mixture.

Combine well until all the dry ingredients are well incorporated.

Let the mixture cool until it is room temperature and add the chocolate chips into it.

Tip! If the mixture is still warm, it’ll melt the chocolate chips and they will make these into chocolate bars!

Line a baking pan with parchment paper and spray with nonstick spray.

Pour the oats mixture into the baking pan and start pressing so it is evenly distributed. Make sure to get every corner pressed and even all through out.

Tip! The pan I use, I happen to have 2 of the same size, so I use the second one to press on top of the pan with the bars in it to make it nice and very compact. It comes out perfect.

Refrigerate the bars for at least 2 hours.

Once they are very firm and cool, remove from the baking pan and cut into bars, or squares.

Store the bars in the refrigerator to maintain the firmness in the texture.

Once they get back to room temperature they have a tendency to break apart easily. They won’t crumble, but they will bend and break apart.

I love sending these bars in my girl’s lunchbox as the perfect pick me up snack!

Enjoy!