Tuesdays with Dorie (Baking Chez Moi): Granola Energy Bars

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is one you might be surprised to find in a French baking book: homemade granola (muesli) bars. But Baking Chez Moi is full of these fabulous homemade treats – humble, not necessarily fancy but always delicious. These bars would definitely make Dorie’s friends wonder “Why would you bother making these at home?” (as she says, many French people simply don’t bake at home – which I totally understand, surrounded by so many fabulous treats that are so accessible, why would you?) Well, to that, I say, make these bars and you’ll understand why.

There’s nothing more satisfying than the act of transforming simple ingredients into something tasty which is why I love baking so much. These bars took about 10 minutes to pull together, 25 minutes to bake, a couple of hours to cool – so really not much hands-on time at all yet a whole week’s worth of granola bars for my mid-morning snacks (and then some!). These will keep me going this week during report card writing! I loved that they reminded me of the muesli bars of my childhood – back when they mostly just contained simple ingredients, as opposed to some of the protein pumped-up versions we see today.

Mine have sunflower and pumpkin seeds, cranberries, golden raisins and coconut as the main ingredients but there are so many other combinations you could try. I’m thinking dark chocolate, coconut and cherry for my next round. Yes, I am already thinking about the next batch and I have barely made a dent in these! A couple of notes: I used 1/2 golden syrup, 1/2 light corn syrup as my binding agent (Dorie calls for brown rice syrup which I am out of) – this worked really well – and they are not too sweet, which I like… I also, in my sinus headachey and jetlagged state, misread the recipe (multiple times!) and used quick cooking oats instead of old fashioned large flake and while the consistency was perhaps a little more dense, they worked. Next time I will use the right oats

Warning: they are “more-ish” so you might need to ration them. Yes, they are healthier than store-bought because you know exactly what’s going into them but they are very energy-dense so a little bit goes a long way.

Get Dorie’s recipe for the Gingerbread granola energy bars here or on page 328 of Baking Chez Moi.

Tuesdays with Dorie participants don’t publish the recipes on our blogs, so you’re encouraged to purchase Baking Chez Moi for yourself which you can do on Amazon or Amazon Canada or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository. Then join us, baking our way through the book!

Please note: The product links from Amazon, Amazon.ca and The Book Depository are affiliate links, meaning if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price which goes towards maintaining eat. live. travel. write. Thank you in advance!

Canadians – win a copy of Ultimate Food Journeys! Contest closes January 14th 2015. Details here.