These homemade no-bake nut-free blueberry granola bars are perfect for back to school. They are easy, delicious and safe for the classroom.
My kids absolutely love granola bars. They like the sweet oatmeal bars the best. The ones that are soft and chewy and have just a small amount of mix-ins, rather than being dominated by nuts and seeds. With back to school this month, I have been testing all kinds of granola bar recipes to try to come up with the perfect bar that is easy, delicious and safe for their nut-free classrooms. Enter this amazing nut-free no-bake blueberry granola bars recipe.
I myself have never been a huge granola bar fan. Imagine my surprise when I caught myself (and my husband) going to the fridge to grab these bars multiple times a day. They are a completely delicious combination of rolled oats, sweet honey, and dried blueberries, with just a hint of salt and a little crunch from raw pepitas. Mix it all together with sunflower seed butter, press it into a pan, and you may never need to buy store bought granola bars again.
Whip up a batch of these today and you will have a healthy breakfast or snack all week… just make sure you eat them more slowly than we did! 🙂
You Will Love This
- These are a perfect nut-free school snack.
- This is a great base recipe for customizing, and can be used to make several different granola bar varieties.
- These freeze well, and can be made ahead and used one-by-one as needed.
Ingredients
Gather up your ingredients. For this recipe you'll need:
- Rolled oats: old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats will work, but do not use steel cut oats.
- Sun butter: sun butter is sunflower seed butter, and has a flavor somewhat similar to peanut butter. I used a slightly sweetened variety of sunflower seed butter (SunButter brand "Natural Sunflower Butter" in the yellow jar). If you use sugar free sun butter, you may want to increase the honey just a bit.
- Honey: honey, plus the sun butter, holds the bars together. I would not substitute another sweetener, or the bars may crumble apart.
- Vanilla extract
- Salt: Adds the perfect bit of salty contrast to the sweet honey and sun butter.
- Dried blueberries: these are a great ingredient to have on hand for homemade granola bars or trail mix, and you can find them by the raisins in your grocery store.
- Pepitas: I used raw pepitas, not roasted and salted. These add a great little crunch to the bars.
Substitutions
- If you don't need your bars to be nut free, you could substitute peanut butter or almond butter in place of the sun butter.
Make it your own!
Use the base of rolled oats, honey, sun butter, salt and vanilla, and add whatever mix-ins you like in your granola bars. Some nut-free mix in options are:
- Mini chocolate chips or white chocolate chips
- Raisins or craisins
- Shredded coconut
- Sunflower seed kernels or chia seeds
Instructions
Step One: Mix all dry ingredients (oats, salt, blueberries and pepitas) together in a large mixing bowl.
Step Two: In a separate mixing bowl, mix together honey, sun butter and vanilla until well incorporated. Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly with a spoon or spatula. The mixture will be thick and sticky, and it should take several minutes to mix it together by hand. Make sure all the oats are well covered.
Step Three: Line an 8x10 or 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper. Pour the mixture into the pan and press down hard to form the mixture into bars. Use the back of a measuring cup or clean hands with a light coat of olive oil to push down on the mixture. You want to compact the bars as much as possible, so use those muscles!
Step Four: Put the pan in the refrigerator and let the bars cool for at least an hour. After the bars are fully cooled, remove them from the pan and cut into individual serving sizes.
Storage
These bars need to be stored in the refrigerator or freezer to keep their shape. If you store them at room temperature they will crumble and fall apart (although my five year old reports that it doesn't matter if they crumble because the crumbles are still delicious).
To store these in the fridge or freezer, put a small piece of parchment paper or wax paper between each bar. Stack the bars in a freezer bag and push out the air to make the bag as airtight as possible. If you freeze the bars, pull them out as you need them and let them come to room temperature naturally (don't microwave them).
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Recipe
Nut-Free No-Bake Blueberry Granola Bars
Ingredients
- 3 cups rolled oats
- ¼ cup raw pepitas
- ¼ cup dried blueberries
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup natural SunButter
- â…“ cup honey
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- Mix all dry ingredients (oats, salt, blueberries and pepitas) together in a large mixing bowl.
- In a separate mixing bowl, mix together honey, sun butter and vanilla until well incorporated. Pour the wet ingredients onto the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly with a spoon or spatula. The mixture will be thick and sticky, and it should take several minutes to mix it together by hand. Make sure all the oats are well covered.
- Line an 8x10 or 8x8 baking pan with parchment paper. Pour the mixture into the pan and press down hard to form the mixture into bars. Use the back of a measuring cup or clean hands with a light coat of olive oil to push down on the mixture. You want to compact the bars as much as possible.
- Put the pan in the refrigerator and let the bars cool for at least an hour. After the bars are fully cooled, remove them from the pan and cut into individual serving sizes.
Tony
So good. These only lasted two days! 🙂