Les Petits Chefs make granola bars

This week, Les Petits Chefs worked with California Walnuts and Rosewood Estates Honey – two of the generous sponsors who helped me get to IFBC this past August.

I had a lovely jar of honey and a big old bag of walnuts needing to be used up and I figured that granola bars would be the perfect use for them, given how much the boys loved making simple granola a few weeks ago.  I found a recipe I liked the look of on the California Walnut recipe site because it was so easy to customise, which the boys like to do.

There was not really much “cooking’ involved, perse – rather, a bit of chopping and a lot of measuring…  (yup, Maths for Baking strikes again – I only have one set of measuring cups so when we are sharing them there’s a bit of mental math involved to calculate how many quarter cups equals 3 full cups)

Ahem. As you can see from the picture below, the boys went a little crazy on the chocolate chips. But it’s all good – with oats, cranberries, raisins, craisins, almonds, walnuts (one group was walnut-free to accommodate a dad’s allergy – we like to make sure parents can taste all the dishes going home), dried apricots, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, coconut and a bit of butter and honey, these are pretty darned healthy snacks.

Whilst they baked away in the oven, we cleaned up, discussed how we could customize the bars to suit different tastes (the boys had great ideas!!) and played a quick game of hangman.  Then the boys waited (not so) patiently whilst they cooled enough to cut them. This was not successful and many of the boys didn’t exactly take home “bars”, rather, baked granola, but the ones I salvaged were easy to cut once they had cooled for about 30 minutes…

These were excellent. I am pretty picky when it comes to granola bars and don’t like most of the packaged ones. These, however, will be made again.

Perfect as they are, for breakfast of a snack, or you could even cut them into small pieces and serve them as holiday treats…

Did you see my entry for Project Food Blog Challenge 8 – Pumpkin, eight ways? If so, I would so appreciate your vote to advance to Challenge 9 where we have to review a restaurant.  Voting runs from 6AM Pacific Time, Monday  November 29th through 6PM Pacific Time on Thursday, December 2ndSimply click here to vote (note: link no longer live).  Thanks in advance for your continued support.

41 thoughts on “Les Petits Chefs make granola bars”

  1. Is anyone else thinking this blog is missing one very important detail: what was Mlle Michels’ “hangman” word?!?!?

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  2. I love that you run this club for the boys, and half the stuff they make looks better than most of my food styling! You can tell them I approve (and since I live in the same country as Jamie Oliver I clearly have great authority on this matter…)!

    Jax x

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  3. I just love hearing about Les Petits Chefs! Those granola bars look and sound amazing. I love how the recipe includes pumpkin seeds and coconut, YUM! I will definitely be trying out the recipe. Thanks for much Mardi! 🙂

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  4. I don’t think the boys overdid the chocolate chips! I mean, can you ever have too many chocolate chips? LOL They did a super job on the bars and I thank you for posting the recipe. I happen to have a lot of California walnuts in my cupboard just waiting to be tossed into something wonderful.

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  5. You know, we really aren’t granola eaters over here, not even in bar form, but you’re almost getting me to try this with that beautiful picture of the honey (with the light streaming through at the bottom — that’s what’s doing it). Oh, and the chocolate chips.

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  6. Nice recipe. I love granola bars. When I was 15 I used to eat about two for breakfast and one for a snack (couldn’t get enough). Making them from scratch might renew my passion.

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  8. Every time I read a Petit Chefs post, I wish I could be a part of this group. Barring a few small issues, I think I’d make a spectacular member 🙂 I hate store bought granola bars so I’m definitely giving these a go!

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  9. Those granola bars look scrumptious!! I am absolutely making them tomorrow – my daughter is so health conscience and will love them!!!
    Thanks for the recipe – can’t wait to see your next one.

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  10. Shop bought muesli bars can never compare to homemade ones – great to see the boys learning this for themselves! Also learning that even a game of hangman is sometimes not enough to distract you when you really really really want something to cool down enough so you can eat it.

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