Earlier this week, Fuzz and I spent about two hours in Target. Well, maybe it was more like 90 minutes, but I know that at least 20 of those minutes were spent looking at trail mix bars. At our Target, the traill mix bars are in the cereal aisle which is adjacent to the shampoo aisle. Fuzz spent her time smelling 15 or so different shampoos while I looked at 11 or so different Trail Mix bars varieties. God Bless America.

Anyway.

Everyone’s making trails Mix bars. There’s Nature Valley, of course. But now Kashi is in on the game with more (perceptually) healthful ingredients. And since trail mix bars are so popular now, Target’s in-house brand, Archer Farms is making them. In true Target spirit, Archer has loaded their Trail Mix bars with M&Ms and Peanut Butter and named them Monster Bars. Did I mention I love Archer Farms? Have you seen what they’ve done with the Target snack food? But that’s a different subject altogether.

What I’m getting to is that the variety of trail mix bars at Target has had me itching to make some really good homemade ones. This morning, I pulled out my King Arthur Cookie Companion and took a crack at their “Vermont Granola Bar” recipe. Based on the ingredients, King Arthur’s bars sounded the most like commercial trail mix bars. That is, no flour, no leavenings, just oaty & grainy stuff held together by a chewy matrix of corn syrup, butter and sugar.

Below is my scaled down adaptation of King Arthur’s recipe. King Arthur’s recipe fits a 15×18 inch pan. I like granola bars, but since I’d never made this particular recipe and wasn’t sure if I’d like it, I didn’t want to commit to that many bars. Now that I’ve made these, twice in fact, I am positive I’ll make them again. They’re terrific.

Here’s a photo. Note the white streaks. Right before I patted them into the pan, I threw in some white chips. The white chips melted into streaks then set up again to make an even richer and more delicious bar.

I’m going to file this under “wholesome” (wink, wink).

Vermont Granola Bars/Aka Trail Mix Bars

1 1/3 cups oats
1/3 cup sunflower seeds (or omit and use 1 2/3 cup of oats)
1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup coarsely chopped roasted almonds — (or sub apricots and almonds for 2/3 cup of actual trail mix!)
1/3 cup chopped apricots
4 tablespoons butter
2 1/2 tablespoons corn syrup
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons white chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line an 8×8 inch baking pan with parchment paper.

Lay oats and sunflower seeds on a parchment lined cookie sheet and toast for 5 minutes. Remove from oven. Sprinkle coconut onto cookie sheet with oats and seeds; toast all for another 3-5 minutes or until coconut is aromatic and starts to brown around edges – keep an eye on it!. Place toasted oats/seeds/coconut mixture in a large mixing bowl; Stir in salt, almonds and apricots.

Place butter, corn syrup, maple syrup and brown sugar to saucepan. Turn heat to medium and stir to mix melting butter into other ingredients. Place a candy thermometer in the saucepan and allow mixture to come to a gentle boil. Boil without stirring until mixture reaches 245 degrees F. on thermometer – a little over “soft ball” stage. Remove from heat. Stir vanilla into hot syrup, then pour syrup into mixing bowl with oat mixture and stir to combine. At this point, you may want to throw in some white chips. They’ll melt, but just let them do their thing and don’t stir the melted chips into the batter.

Press tightly into the parchment lined pan. Bake for 5 minutes. Without removing from pan, Score into 9 squares or 6 rectangles while still warm. At this point, the bars will be hot, crumbly and soft. Walk away and let them cool completely in the pan. They aren’t ready yet. When they are cool, lift parchment and remove from pan. They should be pretty firm at this point, but if you would like them to be even firmer, place them in the refrigerator.

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This entry was posted by Anna on Sunday, July 30th, 2006 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Granola Bars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.