Trail Mix Bars

These gooey, chewy granola bars are my current favorite snack. They’re actually pretty healthy, too. They have no added sugar (unless you use chocolate chips, and those don’t count, right?)

Trail Mix Bars

Hannah Frost

These no-bake gooey trail mix bars are a healthy snack. They have no added sugar and they're gluten free. Just skip the chocolate chips to make them vegan.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Refrigeration time 1 hour hr

Total Time 1 hour hr 10 minutes mins

Course Snack

Servings 16 squares

Ingredients

  

• 1/4 C honey
• 3 Tb peanut butter I use creamy but crunchy works too
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 C quick cooking oats
• 1 C dried fruits and nuts I use cranberries plus a scoop of whatever I have in my trail mix jar
• 3/4 C crisped rice
• 1/2 C unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1/3 C semisweet chocolate chips optional

Instructions

 

• Line 8×8 baking dish with parchment paper. It’s easiest later if you leave generous flaps hanging out the sides.
• Add honey and peanut butter to Pyrex measuring cup and microwave for 20-30 seconds so they soften. Add vanilla and stir it all together. If you accidentally boil the honey like I did, you’ll need to wait a few minutes for it to cool down before you do the next step or you’ll melt the chocolate chips. (Or do it on purpose and own it. It makes the bars look more chocolatey.)
• Put all the rest of the ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir them together. Then dump the peanut butter/honey mix over it and stir it all together until it’s a big sticky mess.
• Scrape it all out of the mixing bowl into the baking dish. Fold your excess parchment paper flaps over the top and press down on them to pack down all the ingredients into the baking dish. The better you pack it, the less the bars will fall apart when you’re eating them.
• Cover with plastic wrap, put it in the fridge and let it all cool until it stiffens up (about an hour). To serve, lift the whole thing out of the baking dish by the parchment paper flaps, put on a cutting board and slice into squares. Best served cold because the bars get more gooey and fall apart easily as they warm up.

Ok, now for the photos of each step. (And a note on photos: I’m not fancy. I’m not a photographer, or a food pornographer. I snapped blurry pictures on my phone so you can see what I did well enough to make some beauty on your own.)

First, here’s how I lined the pan:

Here’s what my peanut butter and honey mixture looked like.

Mix everything else together in a bowl. It doesn’t really matter what you put in; this recipe is super flexible. The trick is just to keep the wet/dry ratio about the same so it will all adhere together.

Then make it all into a sticky mess.

Pack it down in the pan as well as you can. (And when I say “pack,” I mean use your muscles. Take out your aggression. The more you smash them together, the more you will enjoy eating them later as whole bars instead of crumbly bits.)

That’s it! Put it in the fridge until the bars firm up, slice them into squares and enjoy cold!

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