Clean Granola Bars

I found this on the plum organics facebook page. Who knew those little fruit and veggie pouches for kiddies could be used in recipes too? It makes sense though, I have used carrot baby food in carrot cake before to make it moist, and of course replacing oils with applesauce is always great.. so it makes sense that these can be used too, after all it is just baby food in a pouch instead of a jar really. I have tried several granola bar and breakfast bar recipes and a couple turned out OK, but these are fantastic. They are full of good stuff and super easy to throw together. Mine turned out a little crumbly, but I think I either needed a tad more honey, or I used the wrong type of oats? I am not sure. But they did stay together and taste great.. I can see myself making several variations of this in the future. Jeff and I grab cereal bars for breakfast a LOT in the mornings so I am desperate for a healthy and clean recipe that we will actually eat. I think this is it. Yay! Next I think I will add a little peanut butter, you could sweeten it with chocolate chips, change cranberries for raisins, different types of nuts, the possibilities are endless. Plus there are TONS of flavors of the fruit/veggie pouches, some that have greek yogurt, some that have quinoa, oats, barley.. all kinds of stuff hidden in them. Plus MOST of them (read the labels) are clean because it is just whatever fruit or veggie is in it and a little citrus to preserve them. Not ALL of them are, but a lot of them are. So far Target has had the best selection, and Toys R Us has some of the hard to find flavors. You can get them anywhere though, Wal-Mart, Schnucks, pretty much anywhere that sells baby food or toddler snacks has them now. 

Clean Granola Bars

1 just prunes pouch

1/3 cup honey

2 ½ cups old fashioned oats

½ cup chopped almonds

1 apple, raisin, qiunoa pouch

½ cup sunflower seeds

1 cup dried cranberries

whisk together pouches and honey in bowl

combine with oats, nuts, wheat germ, and cranberries

line 8x8 pan with parchment paper and pour mix into pan.

Bake at 325 for 25 minutes

cool one hour them remove from pan and cut into bars- makes 12 bars.  Each bar is 191 calories. 

*NOTE* I couldn't find the apple, raisin, quinoa flavor so I used barley, plum, apple. It was REALLY good.