These low-fat chewy granola bars are so quick to make and they taste great!
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 egg
2 Tbsp ground flaxseed
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup raisins
In a small bowl, combine apple sauce, maple syrup and egg. In a larger bowl, combine dry ingredients, then add in the wet ingredients and stir until fully combined. Bake at 350F for 15 minutes.
I adapted this recipe from a clean eating blog that I really enjoy, called Emily Eats Clean. Every day she writes posts with photos of what she’s eating. I love getting little glimpses into her life, even if it makes me feel like a huge couch potato to hear about all her vigorous exercising. Anyway, here is her post on these Baked Bars if you’re interested.
Most often I make them with Rogers Porridge Oats instead of old-fashioned oats, and when I do I don’t put in the ground flax seed because the porridge oats already have flax in them. This recipe is really fast to throw together. I can have them ready to go in the oven before the oven is even finished heating up. The first time I made these we ate them in the car on the way to the pool, and the car was filled with ‘yum-yum-yum’ sounds from the boys all the way there. I like that they’re a bit chewy because that’s how I prefer my granola bars to be. I really love them smeared with almond-butter, and Cole likes peanut butter on his. The next time I made them I used mini-chocolate chips instead of raisins, just to change things up, and the kids went nuts for them.
In non-granola-related news, I was in a rush tonight and threw together a lazy meal of Kraft Dinner shells with broccoli and hot dogs. When Tony was eating dinner he said how much he loves the dinners I make and that I have such great ideas and I seem to always seem to make exactly what he’s craving that night. Wow, I don’t know how such an uninspired meal brought that on, but I like it! There really have been big changes in my cooking since starting this blog. I used to see making meals as an inconvenient and time-consuming process and I hated trying to come up with things to make, but now I love searching for new and creative meal ideas. There are so many amazing food blogs out there that I had no idea about before I started food blogging myself. Thank you everyone for all your wonderful comments (Tony too!). You motivate me to continue to try new things and to actually enjoy cooking.
Food and Whine 
Hi Megan! These look terrific and I think I have all the ingredients in my house – so may have to give these a try! Do you think they would be just as good without the raisins? My hubby despises raisins. Also, the pita recipe is on my blog now, so check it out and thanks for letting me borrow it!!! 🙂
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I haven’t tried them plain before, I always put raisins or chocolate chips in them, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try! Let me know how it goes. Does he like other dried fruit you could use instead, like dried apricots, blueberries, cranberries, dates, etc? Those would work too.
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Great granola bars! The look delicious! I’m new here and see lots of great recipes to check out!
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I tried these tonight. Very filling! I used cranberries instead of raisins, just because I love them so much and that’s all I had on hand. I also used packets of President’s Choice Cinnamon Spice Oatmeal. Worked great!Just for your information I did the nutritional analysis for a pan of 20 bars (your recipe cut into 20 bars). Each bar is about 100 calories.Thanks so much!
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Thanks emilie! That’s great to know the calorie-count, I was actually wondering about that.
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Hi Megan, I made these last week with chocolate chips. They were yummy and very filling – for some reason my batch only made 8 bars! Could I post this recipe on my blog?? 🙂 Thanks!
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Hey Megan, going to ty these tonight, but what size pan do you recommend baking them in? I have a small square pan (cake pan) – is that good?Teresa
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I posted a reply and then realized I was wrong, it was an 8 x 11″ baking dish that I used (like the one in the original post on Emily Eats Clean). But I’m sure you could use a smaller square cake pan too, the bars would just be thicker and may take a little longer to bake.
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Thanks Megan – I came to my senses before you replied, and that’s exactly what I ended up using! I substituted the maple syrup for a half can of crushed pineapple I had in the fridge that I wanted to get rid of – will let you know how it turns out!
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