My new creation for today - Granola bars

My granola bars before cutting

So I'm one of these people who absolutely loves oats in pretty much any form you can serve them to me - cookies, bread, porridge, savoury dishes and of course, breakfast bars.

I think this endless love comes from my Grandad, who used to, without fail, eat a bowl of porridge every morning. My favourite memories of him are mostly of me dutifully bringing up his bowl of porridge to him in bed and sitting there talking (more than likely complete rubbish) to him until he was finished.

It was thus inevitable that I'd create my own recipe for all the above (still a work in progress to do the whole list so stay tuned).

Here is my granola bar recipe :)

Ingredients:

160g butter, softened
160g packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons caster sugar dissolved in 1 tablespoon boiling water
About 400g rolled oats

(Optional but oh so good)
1 mashed banana
Bittersweet/dark chocolate chips
Any other fruit and/or nuts you wish

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180c.

2. Lightly grease a square tin (about 8x8 or 9x9,no bigger) as you can see in the photo, I had to use my loaf tin which made them too dense and a bit too soft so they were more like flapjacks.

3. Cream your butter and sugar together, mix in the sugar/water combination.

4. Add in your oats (and banana and chocolate if you want too, plus any other fruit or nuts you want). Mix well.

5. Bake for about 20 minutes.

6. Cut into pieces of desired size while still semi warm and leave in the tin to cool completely.

As always let me know what your experiments with this come out like.

Happy baking!