Recipe Experiment: Power Cookie ---> Granola Bars

As I was doing the posts this week about leftover oatmeal, I had an idea of another possible way to use it.  I had never found a recipe for granola bars that I had liked at all. Usually they are so hard and crumbly that by the time you get them out of the pan you have a pile of regular granola. In fact that was what made me work out the recipe for power cookies in the first place.

My thought was, what if I added leftover oatmeal to the power cookie recipe. It had the potential to make a pan of bars kind of like the consistency of chewy granola bars. It was definitely worth a shot.

So tonight I tried it.  I used the power cookie recipe  and just added 1 cup of leftover oatmeal along with the eggs. I let it mix until well blended then proceeded to mix the dough the same way as the cookies. Then I poured the dough out onto a greased rimmed cookie sheet and baked it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

The results were not quite what I expected. The bars taste fine, the kids like them just as well as normal power cookies, but the texture is much more cake-like than chewy granola bar-like. They are very crumbly. This is not what I was looking for. 

I may try again. Maybe if I omit the baking soda and add another cup of dry rolled oats along with the cooked ones I will get a texture more like a granola bar. A little honey to make them a tad stickier may help as well.

If I try it I will post my results here.

Thoughtfully,

Kristin