Wrong. Oh my dear is it *usually* wrong. A lot of processed granola that you'll find in the grocery store is swimming in sugar and yucky ingredients like high fructose corn syrup. So much for a healthy breakfast to get your day off to a great start.
While these bars do have some sugar in them (2/3 C for the whole pan), they have substantially less sugar than your average brand at Kroger and also use honey to add sweetness instead of just relying on granulated sugar. And lord knows there isn't any high fructose corn syrup in these little guys.
Another favorite thing about this recipe is how infinitely adaptable it is. You can use any fruit or nuts you like and can play around with using either almond or vanilla extract. I used dried cherries, sliced almonds and then almond extract for my bars and have to admit that I thought they were a-mazing....even if I do say so myself :) Put it this way...I took the pan of them up to my family's lake house one weekend not too long ago, and between just four of us we had polished off the whole pan in a day and a half. Yikes!
My one gripe is that these were a bit crumbly and getting the sliced bars out of the pan was a bit of a cumbersome process. Placing the pan in the fridge for a bit helped, but I still had to be very gentle with them. Maybe next time I'll add a bit more peanut butter or honey to moisten them up even more and cut down on the crumbly texture.
The good news though...even if they crumbled to bits they still taste exactly the same. And of course you could always completely forgo the bar route and just crumble these up into a bowl or sprinkle it on top of your favorite yogurt.
Dig in! You won't regret making these.
