White Chocolate Apricot Granola Bars
WHITE CHOCOLATE APRICOT NUTTY GRANOLA BARS
Granola on the brain for a lovely Spring snack? If you’re like most people, you’ll definitely enjoy this sweet and salty granola bar recipe. We do love to keep different variety of nuts in our pantry to snack on during the day, especially before a workout.
For this recipe, I do bake it before it needs to sit in the fridge for a couple hours.
This isn’t the quickest recipe for granola that you’ll ever see, but it’s definitely worth the steps to get some great flavor, and an even better texture.
After this 8 x 8” tray of granola bakes, you could end it there, but you wouldn’t have a granola that stays together. This could be a great bag mix though. I bake it first, then put it all in a food processor to get even smaller pieces so that the bars have no problem forming and sticking together in the fridge/freezer.
In this particular granola mix, I use Heinen’s Hickory Harvest nuts, which includes a giant selection at their locations, chia seeds, pepitas, maple syrup and white chocolate candy melts for the bottom of the tray.
You can use other binders though for the bottom, like regular melting chocolate, peanut butter or yogurt. I do end up putting them in the freezer for 30 minutes before the fridge, so that it really hardens together. In my specific nut mixture, I used pecans, roasted cashews and shaved almonds. There is also dried apricots in there, which you can also find in the Hickory Harvest section, along with dried cranberries.
I truly am a little selfish when it come to granola. I LOVE pecans, and using syrup as a binder here really gives me the taste of pecan pie. So OBVIOUSLY I had to use pecans.
WHITE CHOCOLATE APRICOT NUTTY GRANOLA BARS
Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Serving Size: 10-12 bars
Ingredients
Hickory Harvest Assorted nuts – 3/4 cup each of shaved almonds, pecans, roasted cashews
dried apricots – 3/4 cup chopped
pepitas – 3/4 cups
chia seeds – 3 tablespoons
kosher salt – 1/2 teaspoon
Heinen’s organic maple syrup – 1/2 cup - 3/4 cup depending on how sticky you like it
vanilla extract + coconut extract– 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon coconut
3/4 bag white candy melt (white chocolate) (I used Wilton brand)
8” x 8” baking dish lined with parchment for easy removal - I still spray the tray before parchment)
Instructions
Set oven to 320°F.
Spray baking dish lightly with cooking spray. Line with parchment.
In the syrup, put the coconut and vanilla extracts and mix together.
In a mixing bowl toss in all nuts, apricots, chia seeds, pepitas and syrup mixture. Mix well to coat everything.
Pour into the baking dish and pat down lightly. Bake for 30 minutes.
Remove from oven, and in a food processor, put the baked nuts. Pulse until the nuts and apricots are much finer in size.
In a double broiler or by the bag of candy melt instructions, melt the chocolate.
Remove the syrupy parchment from the baking dish, and place another.
Pour the melted white candy chocolate into the bottom of the dish and level out with a spoon.
Pour in the nut mixture from the food processor over the white chocolate, and using a large spoon, push down to really solidify the nuts to level compact shape. You can sprinkle on a little more sea salt and drizzle some syrup on top before you put in the freezer for 30 minutes.
Put in the fridge after it has a firm feel to it, for about 2 hours. Remove from tray and cut into bars to serve! These should last about a week, keep in a dry cool place to preserve the chocolate.
