In my hunt for nutritious breakfast/protein/snack bars to make at home, I found How to Make Granola Bars (Just 4 Ingredients!) on It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken.

So I went to work. Here’s how it went.

IDTLC lists dates, nut butter, oats, and nuts as the 4 main ingredients. It also lists additional add-ins, like coconut, raisins, cranberries, nuts or seeds.

My Ingredients

• Dried Cranberries: soaked and finely chopped in a food processor
• Nutella
• Old-Fashioned Oats: toasted in a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes
• Roasted Almonds: roughly chopped
• Sweetened Coconut

What Worked

• The combination of the chocolate from the Nutella, toasted almonds, and coconut is delicious.
• Toasting the oats is a MUST, giving them so much more flavor and crispness.
• The toasted almonds had a bit of salt for a sweet and salty taste.

What Didn’t Work

• Substituting Cranberries for Dates – Even though I soaked them and chopped them in the food processor, they did not have the same paste-like consistency as the dates would have had.
• The bars did not hold together and I ended up with GRANOLA NOT GRANOLA BARS.

Needless to say, perhaps, I am not disappointed. I have 2 containers of yogurt in the frig and a fair amount of frozen blueberries for breakfast, lunch, dinner or snack.

From a Mistakes come Success.