Granola Bars

The second thing I made in my cooking class was granola bars. It was one big bar in the tin and then I cut it up into smaller pieces to eat as a snack. So, here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

• 50g Butter or margarine
• 3 tbsp Honey
• 100g Sugar (I used caster)
• 150g Oats
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 40g Pumpkin seeds
• 40g Dessicated coconut
• 75g Tropical dried fruit

The method is quite simple so here it is:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C or gas mark 4.
2. Place the butter or margarine, sugar and honey into a saucepan and gently heat until the butter or margarine has melted.
3. Stir in all the other ingredients.
4. Pour the mixture into a non-stick (or lined) baking tin.
5. Pack the mixture down into the baking tin.
6. Bake for 20 minutes until lightly brown.
7. Remove from the oven and cut into 'bars' in the baking tin while hot.

My tips:

• You can try using a different breakfast cereal instead of oats. You could try cornflakes.
• If you don't like any of the fruits or seeds you can swap them out for something else. Instead of pumpkin seeds, try sunflower seeds.
• Make sure you don't leave the pan alone so you don't burn the mixture.

My review:

So I think this went really well saying that I hadn't practised before and didn't really know what I was doing. It was a relatively easy recipe with the melting part being the only complicated bit. Other than that it was just mixing and there are only a couple of actual steps. I think I may have over baked it slightly as it was very hard and a bit past the golden brown stage. It did taste great though and I still have some left over. All of the fruits and seeds mingled in together made it look really nice and it would have looked great presented on a plate. I think it turned out great and I would definitely try it again and with some different ingredients.