Pink Recipe: No-Bake Peanut Butter, Cranberry, Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Bars

Today, I’m going to cut right to the chase and give you a delicious no-bake oatmeal bar recipe. I’m guilty of eating these for breakfast, a grab and go snack, and occasionally dinner when I forget to eat, <— Yes, sometimes I forget.

They’re easy to alter and you could just use the oats, peanut butter and honey if you wanted a simple bar. But I’m the type of girl that likes to jazz things up. So, instead of going basic, I dumped the entire contents of my baking cabinet into a pan and lucky for me (and our readers) they turned out pretty awesome!

Prep time: 10 minutes
Setting time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

1/2 cup Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Honey (I’ve also substituted Agave for honey or made with a mixture of the two)
1/4 cup Dried Cranberries (If you don’t like cranberries, try subbing in raisins or dried blueberries). I use dried cranberries from the farmers market, they’re not overly sweet, I would suggest trying a more natural version vs. Craisins, but they’ll work.
1/4 Shredded Coconut
3 cups Quick Oats
3 squares 60% Cacao Chocolate, broken into small chunks. This ingredient is a preference, by all means, use whatever kind of chocolate you prefer or omit it all together. For me, all the other ingredients make these bars sweet, so I choose a slightly bitter chocolate and it compliments them well, plus it’s the only kind of chocolate I had in the cabinet at the time of creation. But semi-sweet baking chips, white chocolate etc would be delicious as well.

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, melt the honey and peanut butter together on low heat until smooth, turn off the heat.
2. Once you’ve heated the above,  mix in the shredded coconut and dried cranberries, followed by the 3 cups quick oats. Make sure everything is sufficiently mixed together.
3. Next, mix in your chocolate chunks! I’ll admit that on a various occasions, I’ve forgotten to add them and just sprinkled them over the bars in a variety of ways. But mixing them in works best.
4. In a glass baking dish, I generally use a glass 9×13 one because I like my bars on the thinner side, spread your mixture into the dish and then press it down so they make bars.
5. Refrigerate for about 40 minutes so they set and cut into squares or thin rectangles. It’s not life or death for them to refrigerate, but they’re easier to handle once they’ve set. I prefer to cut mine into granola bar sizes and individually wrap them in saran wrap for a grab and go snack. Yields approximately 14-16 bars!

Friendly tip: I’ve found keeping these bars in the refrigerator works best.