B's Granola Bars

The little girl received this cookbook last Christmas.

This morning, the little girl asked me if we could make Granola Breakfast Bars from the book.

Except that she had a lot of other requests... chocolate chips instead of raisins, rice krispies instead of nuts... add marshmallows and more chocolate chips!

But most of all, she wanted to make the recipe all by herself.  And for the most part, she did.  Of course I wouldn't let her use the knife or switch the oven or stove on...

(from top left to right, bottom left to right)
1. Mix together 1-1/4 cup oats, 1/3 cup each marshmallows, chocolate chips and rice krispies.
2. Heat 1/4 cup honey, 1/4 cup butter and 1 tablespoon vanilla sugar over low heat until sugar is melted.  Remove from heat, add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and a pinch of salt.
3. Pour the hot "syrup" into the oats mixture and mix thoroughly.  The chocolate chips may start melting.  Press the mixture into a buttered, lined and (re)buttered 9x6-inch pan.  (The book recommends the use of a potato masher.)
4. Sprinkle more chocolate chips on top.

(Note:  We adjusted the recipe to fit a smaller pan and adjusted the ingredients to accommodate the various add-ins that the little girl wanted.)

Bake at 325F for 25 minutes.  Cool completely in the pan before slicing into thin bars.  We cut ours into 12 by 3 bars.

It was sooooooo yummy!  The little girl couldn't help munching!

Bittersweet Chocolate Crunch

This is really an adaptation of the Nestle Crunch candy bar.

My little girl loves Nestle Crunch and was quite sad after eating her last mini bar.  I decided to make her some homemade ones.  After all, how difficult could it be?  It's basically chocolate with rice krispies!  But I thought of using bittersweet chocolate rather than milk chocolate because she likes bittersweet chocolate too.

So off I went to buy the rice krispies and a chocolate mold to form the bars.  I came home and discovered that somehow the chocolate mold went missing!  It wasn't even registered in the receipt.  And I didn't want to go back to the store!  So I thought I'd just use whatever I had, which was a mini cupcake mold (think mini Reese cups).

I melted 250 grams of bittersweet chocolate (over a double boiler) and added 2/3 cup of rice krispies.  While I originally planned to use the chocolate cup molds, in the end I decided to just spread it out on a parchment-lined cookie sheet because the mixture was pretty thick and wasn't spreading at all.  I stuck it in the freezer for a several minutes and after it hardened, I sliced the big chocolate bar into bite-sized pieces!

The little girl tried a piece and said they were more delicious!  (She does like bitter chocolate!)  She had a complaint though.  She said that my version melted faster than the Nestle Crunch! 

Hubby says he prefers these bittersweet crunch chocolate pieces!