Homemade muesli bars with nuts and seeds

Sam was getting bored with his breakfast routine for work so we decided to mix it up and try home made muesli bars. These bars contain honey to both sweeten and help bind all the ingredients together. They provide the goodness of oats, nuts and seeds. I have added dried fruit but you can omit this. The great thing about these muesli bars is that you can mix and match any combination of ingredients - you could even used quinoa flakes instead of rolled oats.

Homemade muesli bars with nuts and seeds
1 cup honey or maple syrup (or a combination of both)
2 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
1 tbs natvia (or sugar, or omit, as they are sweet without)
1/4 cup peanut butter or other nut butter (I used smooth)
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup oat flour

2 tbs chia seeds
3/4 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
3/4 cup sunflower seeds
3/4 cup dried cranberries

3/4 cup slivered almonds or other nuts (I roughly chopped or pulse them a few times in a spice grinder, but you can leave them as is) 

1 cup sultanas (or any combination of dried fruit, e.g apricots, dates etc)

Line a large rectangular pan with baking paper.

Combine the honey, vanilla, natvia and peanut butter in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for three or four minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat.

Add remaining ingredients in a large bowl and pour the hot honey mixture over the top. Mix well before tipping the mixture into the prepared pan and pat down with wet hands. Chill in fridge for an hour, or until firm, before cutting into bars. Store in fridge or freezer.

These muesli bars are adapted from this recipe.

Notes
You can cut the bars as large or as small as you want. Sam takes them to work for breakfast so we cut them into quite large bars. You could cut them up smaller for snacks, or into bite sized pieces for an after school treat.

These bars are pretty delicate, so they are best stored in the fridge or freezer. The boiling of the honey is an important part of the process to help the bars firm up a bit - if you omit this step and just melt the honey then they will be softer.

You can mix and match any combination of dried fruit and add ins - even add chocolate chips.

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