Forget store-bought! Here is how to make delicious baked granola bars at home! Packed with good-for-you ingredients, these homemade bars are easy to make and taste incredible!
We love making granola bars around here! These granola bars are absolutely delicious, thanks to the baking. We mix some of our favorite ingredients with some sugar and honey. Then, as the bars bake in the oven, the sugar melts and caramelizes into the bars, and at the same time, the oats and nuts toast and become extra nutty.
These turn out golden brown, toasted, and just a little chewy. They are heartier than our softer, chewier, no-bake granola bars. I pack more goodies into these so they are thicker. I love these baked bars and give them an edge over the no-bake recipe. That said, my young son loves the no-bake bars, so you should look at both to see which style works best for you. If you love peanut butter, we also have these peanut butter granola bars (I told you we liked making our own!).
Key Ingredients
- Oats: We use oats two ways in these bars. First, you’ll add lots of rolled oats to the mix, and second, you’ll use oat flour or finely ground oats to help make up the glue that keeps these bars together.
- Sweetener: I use coconut sugar (or granulated sugar) and honey (or maple syrup) in these bars. The sugar melts in the oven, helping to glue the bars together. The honey helps, too, but mostly, it’s there for a little stickiness and flavor. I’ve reduced the sugar in these bars over the years. If you prefer a sweeter bar, add some chocolate chips or increase the sugar by a few tablespoons.
- Nuts and Seeds: I love adding a healthy amount of nuts, but I prefer to chop them pretty small before adding them. After making these many times, I’ve noticed that if they crumble, they do so where a larger piece of nut or dried fruit sits. So, by more finely chopping the nuts, we minimize crumbling. I love walnuts, pecans, crumbled sliced almonds, pumpkin seeds, dried coconut, and flaxseed meal. The options are endless!
- Dried Fruit: Just like with the nuts and seeds, we want to chop the fruit small. I love dried cranberries, but other fruits like raisins, golden raisins, apricots, and figs are excellent.
- Almond Butter: Substitute peanut butter, cashew butter, or sunflower butter. This helps to make the glue that holds our bars together. I love homemade almond butter when I have it on hand.
- Olive Oil or Melted Butter: I used olive oil in the bars in our photos, but butter works just as well! Coconut oil is an option, too!
- Egg: Originally, I didn’t add an egg to this recipe, but over the years, I’ve started and don’t plan on going back. It helps the bars hold together and gives them a bit more moisture, leading to a slightly chewier bar. You can substitute it with a flax egg.
- Vanilla, Salt, and Cinnamon: These make our bars taste amazing. Feel free to use your favorite baking spice blends like apple pie spice or pumpkin spice.
These baked granola bars really are so simple for you to make at home. You’ll mix the wet ingredients until smooth, then pour them into a bowl with the oats, nuts, fruit, and sugar. Make sure everything gets a really good mix, and then push it all down into a baking dish. Push firmly to really pack it in there, then bake in the oven until light golden around the edges. Simple, good for you, and delicious!
Homemade Baked Granola Bars
- PREP
- COOK
- TOTAL
My family loves these baked granola bars (especially me). They turn out lightly toasted, hearty, and full of flavor. Feel free to swap in your favorite nuts, seeds and dried fruit.
One note with these: As with many homemade granola bars, these can crumble a little bit as you cut them. Cooling the bars completely (or even chilling them) helps you get clean edges when cutting them. Also, when chopping your nuts and dried fruit, chop them finely. The larger the piece, the more likely that will be where the bar will crumble a little. So, getting everything finely chopped before adding to the granola mixture is helpful! I use my blender for the nuts and pulse a few times before adding them. And finally, if they do crumble around the edges, you can usually just push them back together!
You Will Need
1 ½ cups (160g) old-fashioned rolled oats
⅓ cup (35g) old-fashioned rolled oats, finely ground, or ⅓ cup oat flour
⅓ cup (65g) coconut sugar or granulated sugar, increase to ½ cup (100g) for sweeter bars
½ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ cup (85g) finely chopped nuts, like walnuts or pecans
¼ cup (30g) pumpkin seeds, unsweetened dried coconut flakes, or a combination
½ cup (70g) chopped dried fruit
2 tablespoons flaxseed meal or flaxseeds
¼ cup (65g) almond butter, peanut butter, or sunflower butter
¼ cup (85g) honey or maple syrup
¼ cup olive oil or melted butter
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water
1 large egg or flax egg
Directions
1Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C) grease and line a 9×9-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on two sides to make removing the granola bars easier.
2In a large bowl, mix the rolled oats, finely ground oats, sugar, chopped nuts, pumpkin seeds, dried fruit, and flaxseed meal.
3In a separate bowl, whisk the almond butter, honey, olive oil (or melted butter), vanilla extract, water, and eggs until well blended. Pour into the bowl with oats. Mix until thoroughly coated.
4Transfer the granola mixture to the prepared baking pan, then press it down. Use a sheet of parchment paper placed on top of the granola mixture to help firmly pack it down into the pan. The better you pack it in there, the better the bars will hold together later.
5Bake the bars for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the edges are light golden brown and there is a little color on the top. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan to room temperature.
6Remove from the pan, and then cut into bars or squares. A serrated knife or heavy chef’s knife is helpful. If the bars are crumbling a little on you, chill them for about an hour and try again. I find these crumble slightly, but only where larger bits of nuts or dried fruit are, which you can usually push back into the bar.
Adam and Joanne's Tips
- Storing: Keep these bars in an airtight container at room temperature for 1 week, or freeze them! They stay fresher in the freezer, especially when individually wrapped and placed into a freezer bag. You can remove them as needed, and they last in the freezer for up to a month.
- Sugar: As written (with ⅓ cup) these bars are not too sweet, but not as sweet as many generic store-bought bars. For sweeter bars, increase the sugar to ½ cup or more. Or, add chocolate chips to the granola mixture.
- Chocolate chips: If you add chocolate, I prefer the mini chocolate chips for the same reason I prefer finely chopped nuts (the bars hold together better).
- The nutrition facts provided below are estimates. We assumed olive oil.
I made this recipie and used my cookie scoop to bake them into little granola bites. Really yummy and I didn’t worry about them crumbling apart because I didn’t have to cut them
I used dried cranberries for my fruit and used walnuts for the nuts with honey and coconut sugar and unsweetened dried coconut and followed the recipe exactly and my husband and I absolutely love thes perfectly sweet chewey granola bars.
We love dried cranberries in these bars. We are so happy you enjoyed them! 🙂
Mine is a question…. could I substitute almond flour instead of oat flour as the binder? And can brown sugar be substituted instead of white?
Brown sugar is fine instead of white sugar. As for the almond flour, I’m not sure as I have not tried this myself. If you try it, let us know how it turns out 🙂
Instead of oats and oat flour I used toasted buckwheat (a flowering plant pseudograin instead of a grass grain) and coconut flour, and I am thrilled with the results. Finally, on my predominantly “paleo” diet I have something sweet, filling and delicious! Thank you for this recipe!! It’s a game changer for me!
So happy you were able to adjust the recipe to your needs.
Love this recipe the bars were delicious. Thank you!! 🙂
You are so welcome! Glad you enjoyed them 🙂
They are very easy to make and are very good 😊
I love these granola bars! Can I please get the calorie count per serving?
Hi Bernzy, So glad you loved the recipe. We just added the nutrition facts to the recipe.
Hi! Recipe looks great! Do you have the nutritional information? Would I be able to use Splenda brown sugar instead? Thanks?
Hi Mary, we have not tried using Splenda to make these granola bars so we don’t know if it would work or not. We did just add the nutrition facts to the recipe.
These are so good, I think I am going to start making these every week. They are so delicious and nutritious!
I’m curious as to if anyone has tried reducing the sugar in the recipe? I might use chocolate chips as an add in so was considering reduce the sugar about by half to 1/3 cup. Would this be a bad idea?
Hello! Thanks for great recipes:) After trying your chewy granola bars which turned out so good I really wanted to make a baked version as well, but got stuck by converting cups into grams. Could you please provide measurements in grams? Thanks!
Yum Yum Yum i can’t wait to try this one tomorrow morning but i will substitute butter with a healthier fat i don’t really like butter :>
You have a nice blog
Hello Joanne and Adam
I made your Chewy Granola bars few hours ago,it comes out perfect.I did some changes since I read the comments that some of the ppl couldn’t cut the granola perfectly. I did some changes:
I did add a white egg to your recipe,in the other hand, I didn’t add 2tbs of water and 1/3 of the finely ground oat.
After my granola baked I let it cool down for more than an hour, I could cut is into bars. The tast and texture absolutely De Li Cious…..
Thank for sharing with us….
I just made these outstanding granola bars and my house smells wonderful!!! It is raining outside and has been for the last 3 days so it is kind of gloomy but in my house you’d never know it. I LOVE homemade granola bars and haven’t even tasted them. The aroma is out of this world, my husband tried them and he has never had homemade granola bars before. He loved them and said not to buy the box stuff anymore. I’m planning to give this batch to my daughter and her healthy friends for their trip. Thank you for the recipe and I will be making this again and again.
Hi Patty, we’re so glad you enjoyed the bars!
If you make lots of granola bars (every week or so) it may be worth investing in a separated pan. I have used baking pans that are for bars/ eclairs etc and instead of making one big batch that needed to be cut I made a bunch of individual granola bars. It works great, but if you only make them once in a while it may not be worth the money. There are pans such as the Slice Solutions Brownie Pan which have removable dividers as well 🙂
Thanks for the yummy recipe!
Hi guys, I love making granola bars and my recipe is pretty awesome but you can always improve, change and try something new. I have a trick that you may like: lightly oil spray the cookie sheet and of course use parchment paper. Then after pressing the prepared granola mix( make sure it is tight, using wet fingers), create a firm edge with a spatula and ….use a pizza cutter and make the pattern for your bars, YES before baking !!!! This process is almost fool proof, you may just have to use a knife and touch over your lines and enjoy a great, uncrumbled granola bar after they are baked. I will try your recipe against mine and will let you know but it looks amazing.
Since I started making granola bars, I will never go back to store bought…and so do my friends, which I supply on weekly basis, of course for a fee to buy my ingredients.
Ana – THANK you, we LOVE your tip for cutting prior to baking — definitely trying soon!
I am making these for the second time because they were so awesome that they disappeared too quickly the first time I made them. I added 4 kinds of nuts and seeds and dates as well as cranberries. I’ll never be satisfied with any other granola bar again.
We are so glad that you like the recipe. We agree that the granola bars you find in the stores are expensive and don’t taste nearly as good as fresh homemade bars.
whoops!…good catch and thanks again for the tip!
If you love the recipe and the only thing that is a glitch for you is the sticking in the pan, then my suggestion is to line your pan with the type of aluminum foil that is “non-stick”! Leave a little extra foil on each side of the pan to use as handles and lift your granola bars out of the pan. Presto! That non-stick aluminum foil stuff is amazing.
Great idea, Phyl. We also had hoped the bars were a little less loose, but the idea for getting them out with aluminum foil is a good one!
Hey guys, I can report that my second attempt with chewy granola was a far greater success. The bars seem to be holding together and I only experienced minor breakage during cutting.
Awesome, Wendi – So excited to try with your changes/adaptation. You see, THIS is why food blogging is so awesome!
Thanks!!
Falling apart or not, these sound delicious. This recipe is easy to follow and is so much healthier using all fresh ingredients. Its worth eating even in crumbs!
I have found that using rice syrup instead of honey does the trick. It is super sticky and holds the bars together well. Lundberg is the brand I use and you can find it by the syrups (corn, golden, maple) in most major grocery stores. Good luck!
Cari – Very interesting suggestion, this is why I love food blogs and comments – we learn so much!! Thank you, we will definitely give rice syrup a try!
Hmmm – these look so hearty and delicious and like the perfect healthy snack.
Amazing granola bars….!
Its so perfect, felt like picking one from your tray…
These look delicious. I made some granola last night. I have tried granola bars before but I have never been able get the consistency right.
Bummer that the bars fell apart! Parchment could certainly be a help – line the pan such that some parchment sticks out on either side of the bars so you can just lift the whole thing out. I also noticed that another granola bar recipe on our site suggests cooling the bars in the pan for 10 minutes before cutting, then letting cool completely before removing from the pan. That worked well for me with our granola bar mix, and I bet it would do the trick here, too. Thanks for giving the recipe a whirl – and sharing with your readers!
We are definitely thinking parchment, too Allison. Thank you so much for commenting! The bars truly are delicious!
Adam and Joanne, unfulfilled potential seems to be the theme today. I have to say my first thought was to make a parchment sling and use that to get the granola out of the pan. Even if they don’t hold up as bars, you could crumble this into a bowl with some milk or into yogurt. At least that’s what I plan to do ; )
Wendi, this would be awesome crumbled over yogurt, but is also quite perfect by itself (I know, because I am eating some of those crumbles right now) … They really are perfectly chewy, it is so frustrating that we could not get them out of the pan more successfully – Looks like we will be attempting again soon!