Name: 5 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Quinoa Granola Bars
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 17 min
Total time: 27 min
Ingredients: 4 cups old fashioned oats (gluten-free if needed); 3/4 cup honey (use maple syrup for vegan); 1 cup natural peanut butter (I use crunchy); 1/2 cup toasted quinoa; 1/4 cup peanut butter chips (chocolate chips, or chocolate drops); optional (1 T each of ground flax seed, hemp hearts, chia seeds)

5 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Quinoa Granola Bars

My favorite snack in the whole wide world, with no second place in sight, is the chewy chocolate chip peanut butter granola bar. It is the pinnacle of perfection with a balance of chewy and sweet sustenance all packaged together. Drawn to the perfect pairing of peanut butter and chocolate, I can’t stay away; I’m faithful to eat one a day.

Well I’m one of those old school people who still subscribes to the actual newspaper. You know the kind that lands in your lawn (or the neighbor’s lawn)? The kind you’ve got to unroll? The kind that blackens your fingers? Yeah, that’s the one!

While I was skimming through our local Daily Everett Herald a few months ago, I happened upon an interesting set of recipes. The theme was healthy snacks, and every recipe incorporated quinoa somehow. Although I wasn’t interested in making the actual recipes in the newspaper, the idea intrigued me enough to try adding toasted quinoa to my favorite granola bar recipe.

So I toasted some quinoa on my cast iron skillet (a half cup to be exact), and made my go-to granola bars subbing out a half cup of the oats with the quinoa. An instant hit, the 5 Ingredient Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Quinoa Granola Bars! I love that the quinoa adds the “perfect protein” to my granola bars. And I love the teeny tiny texture and crunch the quinoa contributes.

Quinoa not only contributes to the texture, but quinoa is also heart healthy, full of fiber and flavonoids (an antioxidant), reducing disease, cancer, and inflammation. If you don’t know how to toast quinoa, visit Ancient Grains here. Basically rinse your quinoa and heat on a dry skillet on medium low heat until light brown. I don’t personally like to brown it much at all (I’ve been burned in the past…or the quinoa has:).

And for a tip to make your granola bars stay together, press the bars FIRMLY into the pan. I use a spatula under a potato masher and mash away. I’ve also been meaning to share this next bit for awhile. In the past year I bought a dough cutter/scraper, and it’s changed my culinary life. It’s one of my top five kitchen tools because I make granola bars so much, and the dough cutter makes the granola bars a cinch to cut.

And for those eye-popping candy coated chocolate drops, I’m now buying them from Trader Joe’s. They have beautiful colors using these natural ingredients: tumeric, spirulina, annatto, red radish extract, red cabbage extract, and beetroot juice. Yes! Thank you Trader Joe’s!!