The Best Soft Granola Bars

Granola bar with oats.

Aww, hey team! Peanut-butter-honey-loaded soft granola bar for you?

We meet again – this time across oceans where I’m writing this from our sweet lil hotel room in Cebu City, Philippines where the air conditioning is pumping and mini-fridge is serving me up some ice cold mango juice and the CNN channel on our little TV is keeping me all up to date with the SuperTuesday happenings as I write a quick post for the internet. TECHNOLOGY, MAN. It’s pretty awesome that we can make this whole food-blog-song-and-dance gig work from anywhere.

So let’s grab a BEST EVER soft granola bar and have a little snack and catch up.

HOW TO MAKE OUR BEST SOFT GRANOLA BARS (40 SEC):

Granola bars on parchment paper.

First things first – these granola bars.

They are very very VERY easy. They are just the perfect amount of crunchy and salty-sweet. And maybe most importantly, they are soft and they actually stick together and they are delicious to eat.

It’s Larabar simplicity meets Sunbelt soft texture meets KIND bar crunchiness.

Also, because the ingredients are so very basic, you can add or change them as needed. I’m guessing that you have most everything in the house right now: peanut butter, honey, pretzels, oats, and peanuts.

Take it and run with it, friends. Take it and RUN.

Creamy peanut butter with a spoon.
Granola bars on parchment paper cut with a knife.

Okay, so beyond granola bars.

We are in the Philippines! WE ARE IN THE PHILIPPINES.

Our ten days here are dual-purpose: to re-visit the city we lived in and orphanage that we worked at for a year, and to work on some media projects (read: pictures and video) for the orphanage. I have something big in the works in this orphanage-meets-blog-meets-impact department, and right now I’m just sort of simmering on it. It’s making me 95% excited and 95% nervous. Just… I hope you’ll check back. Will you check back?

Things have been going so well that sometimes I forget that I have a blog. Which is good. It’s a drink of normal water to not be so consumed with the blog and internet world, even if that means that most of my day is spent having a whopping zero amount of access to wifi and none of my attempted snaps ever go through. I can deal. It’s like a tech detox.

On the very positive side of things so far, the kids at the shelter are 100% CUTE OVERLOAD status, the projects we are working on are challenging and fun, annnnnd we ate this whole batch of granola bars throughout the two days before, two days during, and two days after our long trek to this side of the world.

Exhibit A.

Woman holding a bag of granola bars on an airplane.

On the very negative side, there’s just that one little thing about –> earthquakes. They scare me like nothing else ever and so, of course, obviously, there had to be a small earthquake here in Cebu yesterday. Had to. Couldn’t have happened in the other 350 days of the year. And also, of course, we are on the 8th floor of our hotel. Obviously. Had to be. And to say I am totally freaked out about all of this would be a major understatement. I am already a little jumpy about life in general, so having experienced some earthquakage yesterday does not help a mind like mine.

To add to the nervous energy brewing up there in my mind, I am literally sitting here in the hotel room seeing breaking news on CNN about the 8.1 earthquake in Indonesia and the resulting tsunami warnings and don’t worry – I’m not even panicking at all. (This is a lie. I am fully panicking. Indonesia is basically our next door neighbor right now. Full panic.)

FRIENDS! What is this?! How? How do people live in places with earthquakes? Like, how does one a) survive the stress of mentally having to always be prepared for an earthquake at any given moment, and b) figure out a way to stash away as many soft granola bars as possible in case of such emergency?

I’m kidding, in that ha-ha-serious way. Please advise on earthquakes immediately.

Granola bars on parchment paper.

When its all said and done (meaning when I most likely die from an earthquake in the next hour or two), just know this -> these are the best soft granola bars I’ve ever made and they are bomb in flavor and texture. It is worth it for me to use my last ever blog post to tell you this important and life-changing information.

These soft granola bars take hardly any time to prep and they will fill your fridge / freezer / belly with wholesome soft granola bar happiness.

Is that not the best Wednesday news a hungry girl could ask for?

Food blogger life mission: complete.

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Granola bar being held by hand.

The Best Soft Granola Bars

4.7 from 23 reviews
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Description

The BEST Soft Granola Bars recipe – made with PB, honey, vanilla, oats, pretzels, peanuts (and any other add-ins you like). So easy and SUPER yummy!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups rolled oats
  • 2 cups twisted pretzels, crushed down to about 1 heaping cup
  • 1/2 cup salted peanut halves
  • 1 cup peanut butter (more as needed)
  • 1/2 cup honey (more as needed)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

  1. Toss the oats, crushed pretzels, and salted peanut halves together in a large bowl.
  2. Stir the peanut butter, honey, and vanilla together in a separate bowl until smooth and creamy. Pour the mixture over the dry ingredients in the other bowl. Stir until combined.
  3. Press the bar mixture into a 9×9 inch pan lined with parchment paper (9×13 will work – it will just yield wider, flatter bars). Freeze for 30 minutes. Pull out of the pan and cut into bars. Store bars individually wrapped in the freezer for quick grab-and-go snacks.

Notes

After you mix everything together, it’s sort of up to you to make a judgement call about how you want your granola bars to be. A few options – 1) pulse half of the mixture through a food processor to change up the texture a bit. Stir it back in with the rest of the mix. This just helps it to have more interesting texture that holds together better. 2) Add more peanut butter or honey if things seem to dry or crumbly. 3) Add more oats or pretzels if the mix seems too heavy. 4) Mix in anything else you want! The is just the base – add dried fruit, chocolate chips, more nuts, seeds, whatever you like.

I used Jif Creamy Natural Peanut Butter, so you may need different amounts depending on the type of peanut butter you use. Sometimes natural peanut butter is less sweet, less salty, and/or more oily, so just keep that in mind.

  • Prep Time: 15 mins
  • Cook Time: 30 mins
  • Category: Snack
  • Cuisine: American

Keywords: homemade granola bars, soft granola bars, granola bar recipe

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Nutrition is for 16 bars.

One More Thing!

This recipe is part of our collection of sweet honey recipes. Check it out!

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