Canada Day!

Hope you had an amazing Canada Day and 4th of July!

I Totally Guessed Granola Bars

Every time I look for a granola bar recipe, I get frustrated. I have lots of ingredients to make granola bars, but none of the recipes I find have those things in them, or they have a couple of items that I don't have on hand. So I totally guessed. I used what I had, threw it together with no rhyme or reason, and they turned out! How about that? I used many of the recipes as inspiration of what to put in, but the measurements were completely random. I know this isn't a recipe, but this is how I did it, and these are the kind of "recipes" I like to follow. Use what you got!



I used:
rolled oats
crushed Chex cereal
unsweetened coconut
flax seed
raisins
chopped peanuts
pistachios
cinnamon with sugar
brown sugar
chopped fair trade chocolate
salt
vanilla
LOTS of honey
maple syrup
water



Oven at 350
I started out with my main ingredients, oats, coconut, raisins, with my baking dish next to me as a volume guideline. I then added the other dry ingredients based on what looked like enough/ used probably 1/4 each of nuts because that’s all I had left so I used them up. Then I put enough honey and syrup in to hold everything together, probably 1 part syrup to 3 parts honey. It wasn't really holding together, so I added some water, in the hopes that that would cook the oats and hold. I mixed it all well and pressed it into my 9" x 9" dish and popped it in the oven till it looked done (when the top was golden brown). I didn't keep track but it was probably between 20-30 minutes, just keep an eye on it.



I wasn't too worried about it not turning out because then i could just eat it as regular granola/cereal.



When the top was golden, I took it out and let it cool for 10 minutes, then put it in the fridge overnight. In hindsight, I should have took it out of the dish before, because it was a little difficult getting it out the next morning.



They tasted great and were a little crunchy on the top, and chewy on the bottom, best of both worlds.

Salt Water Taffy

I recently found a recipe from Vanilla & Lace for salt water taffy and since I had all the ingredients, I had to try it.



I had to guess with the temperature of the sugar, since I only had a meat thermometer that went up to 190 F and I needed the sugar to be between 256- 266. I just boiled everything until it started to get thick.

I only made half the recipe, and made two different flavours from it. I used pure vanilla extract (with green food colouring) and almond extract (with green colouring).

The first time I boiled the sugar, it didn't get to temperature, so I reheated both flavours separately.

The first one I made was the green almond, and I almost brunt it!.

This made the sugar harder to work with because it was tough and stayed very hot when I pulled it.

When it got too tough to pull, I out it in the microwave for 10 sec and that softened it perfectly, but it still had to be very hot. This flavour ended up being a hard candy.

The second round with the blue vanilla worked out better because I didn’t let it get too hot, so it was wayyyy easier to work with and made a more chewable candy (and I only had to microwave it a few times).

I hope you too try out making some candy, stock up for birthdays or weddings this summer!

Bike to Beach