Attempted Granola Bars

I've read numerous recipes for homemade granola bars. I've also been wanting and planning to make these all summer.  Since it's the end of August now, I thought I'd go ahead and give it a try. The recipe is simple enough and you can throw in just about anything you want from fruits and nuts to chocolate and other sweet treats. The challenge is getting it to stick and stay together. 

Here's my mixture of gluten free oats, sunflower seeds, dried pomegranate seeds, melted butter, honey and peanut butter. I was thinking things were looking good at this point, cause they were definitely tasting good.  You know, mixed the dry ingredients, oats, chex cereal, sunflower seeds and pomegranate together. Then took my boiled, melted down honey, butter and peanut butter mixture and poured it right over my dry mix. Stir it up to combine and you have your wonderful hot, sticky mess of granola goodness.  Now time to make that hot mess into bars

I pressed all the mixture into a greased baking pan and let that sit at room temperature for 2hrs.  While I was waiting I decided to do a chocolate drizzle over the top. 

I'd say that was more than halfway successful. Just disregard the chocolate blob in the middle. I had a heavy pouring hand at that moment. 

Ok, so 2hrs have passed, I'm ready to cut up the granola and make my bars and with my first cut I could already tell that they were going to fall apart. Wasn't worried about it, just popped them in the fridge for 30 minutes thinking that will firm things right up.  30min in the fridge, granola comes out and still falling apart. I accepted defeat at this point and turned this "fail" into a glorified version of granola. 

Here's the almost empty jar. My husband loves it!  I'm glad it wasn't a total loss. There's definitely a learning curve when it comes to making granola bars and I think I've figured out what I did wrong and to fix that for next time. I basically didn't use enough sauce, I needed more honey and peanut butter. Note to self...measurements are important. 

Anyways, I'm not gonna give you a specific recipe since these guys didn't turn out. I'll tell ya what I used though

Gluten Free Oats- about 2 cups

Rice/chex cereal- about a cup

Butter -1/4 cup

Honey -1/4 cup

Peanut Butter - 1/2 cup maybe

Some sunflower seeds

Some pomegranate seeds

Melted chocolate chips

Next time I'll use more peanut butter and honey, maybe throw a little raw sugar into the mix. Also, I'll let the wet ingredients boil/cook a little longer. When I get it all perfected, I'll hook you up with a detailed recipe and a play by play of the process.