Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and raid the kitchen? I used to do this quite regularly in my early 20’s.

I stopped doing this quite a while ago. Until recently. Being pregnant my eating habits have completely changed. Including desperately needing to eat around 5:00 in the morning. And I loathe being awake at 5:00 in the morning.

I’m not talking about a lot of food. Just something small I can pop in my mouth, finish quickly and hurry back to bed. Because I definitely need to go back to bed as soon as possible at that time.

When I don’t have something easy to eat it in the middle of the night it kind of sucks. Really I’m way too tired to try and figure something out so I just go back to bed, hungry, and hungry I stay until I finally wake up.

I decided to make some granola bars because I was pretty certain I had everything I needed to make them at home which would make them cheaper then buying at the store. While scouring the internet for a suitable recipe I was pretty disappointed as most seemed more like a dessert then a granola bar. Then I remembered a recipe I had seen for raspberry crumble bars and thought I’d check out the ingredients. Surprisingly the amount of fat and sugar in these was far less then what was required in the recipes I came across for granola bars. So I decided to base my recipe off of this dessert recipe and tweak it to health it up a bit (ps this girl is a genius and you should totally be all up in her website. I told my husband I hope we can raise half as intelligent and self aware of a teenager).

I added some chopped pecans to this recipe, downed the butter a bit and subbed half whole wheat flour. It worked beautifully. I ended up with a delicious little granola bar that is simultaneously soft and crunchy. The sweetness of the raspberry jam balances the weight of the bar perfectly. And they’re ridiculously easy to make. Really, go do it. Right now.

Raspberry Granola Bars

Adapted from 17 and Baking

Ingredients

3/4 plus 1/8 cups all purpose flour
3/4 plus 1/8 cups whole wheat flour
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
8 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon milk
1 1/2 cups old fashioned oats
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
3/4 cup seedless raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

1.  Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl oIna mixer until well combined. Add the butter and mix until crumbly. Add the milk and mix until dough comes together. Mix in the oats and pecans until well combined.

2.  Put 1/4 of the dough off to the side. This will be the topping. Press the rest of the dough evenly into a buttered 9×9″ baking pan. Spread the jam evenly over the top (if the jam seems tough to spread, heating it a little could help.) Crumble the reserved dough evenly over the top.

3.  Bake in the center of the oven until golden, 20-25 minutes, and cool completely in the pan on a rack. Use a knife to loosen the sides, lift it out, and cut into bars on a cutting board. I got 25 small bars out of one pan.