No-Bake Granola Bars (Vegan Recipe) - Elavegan (2024)

FAQs

How do you bind granola bars together? ›

While there are several different sticky ingredients that you can use, we've found that the binding agent that works the best is honey! When added to your homemade granola bars, honey acts as glue that sticks all the pieces together.

Honey. Sweetens the granola bars and helps bind the dry ingredients together.

While the oats and nuts bake, you can make the sticky glue that holds our bars together. You'll melt butter, honey, and brown sugar in a saucepan and simmer until the sugar dissolves. Mix this sticky mixture with the toasted oats and nuts. Allow everything to cool, and then toss in dried fruit and chocolate chips.

Honey: Since it's a granola bar, refined sugar is not used in the recipe as it's meant to be healthy. So to provide appropriate sweetness, honey is used. Also, honey acts as the primary binding agent.

Make sure that whichever granola recipe you use, it calls for some liquid, typically oil of some kind (I recommend olive oil for a subtle earthy, floral flavor, or melted unrefined coconut oil for subtly coconutty flavor). The liquid will help the chia seeds to gel, ensuring the granola sticks together.

Chia seeds

Similar to flax seeds, chia seeds can be mixed with water and left to thicken, creating what is commonly called a chia egg. The gel-like texture of a chia egg makes this a brilliant binder.

If your granola bars are falling apart or seem too crumbly, here are a few tips. Make sure you use honey or another sticky sweetener such as maple syrup in the liquid part of the recipe; this recipe calls for honey. This will help bind together the ingredients and keep that signature bar shape.

Peanut, almond, cashew, sunflower seed, and pumpkin seed are all great options. Another great addition is dried fruit, which sweetens up your bar with naturally occurring sugars while providing fiber and vitamins—plus chewiness and binding. “I personally love adding chopped dates or apricots,” Ansari says.

Many vegans refer to Oreos as “accidentally vegan,” meaning they don't contain animal products — but they weren't created to be a specifically vegan treat. Oreos do not contain milk, eggs, or any other animal-derived products, so they are technically vegan in that sense. Plant-based cookies and cream lovers rejoice!

Is honey vegan? ›

In the strictest definition of the word, honey is not vegan. As the product of a living being –honeybees, though there are other some 20,000 bee species to be found around the world – honey falls into the same category of non-vegan food products as milk and eggs.

As with many food items, in its simplest form, peanut butter should always be vegan. The vast majority of peanut butters you find in grocery stores will therefore be fully plant-based. Traditional peanut butter is made from peanuts and often a small amount of salt or oil.

Homemade granola bars aren't hard to make once you have all the right ingredients and they'll certainly save you money in the long term.

Fill the bowl up with water to completely cover the mixture – enough that you can stir to combine. This soaking process will help the oats and seeds digest better. After the oat/seed mixture has soaked 8-12 hours, add the rest of the ingredients and combine.

In December, the Quaker Oates Company recalled certain granola bars and cereals over possible salmonella contamination. Then in January, the company expanded the recall, adding about two dozen more products to the list.

Add an egg white.

The whites act as a kind of glue that binds the ingredients together. To ensure that the egg whites coat all the ingredients, I beat them with a whisk until foamy and increased in volume, which makes it much easier to fold into the granola.

If your granola bars are falling apart or seem too crumbly, here are a few tips. Make sure you use honey or another sticky sweetener such as maple syrup in the liquid part of the recipe; this recipe calls for honey. This will help bind together the ingredients and keep that signature bar shape.

Cut into desired size and put each into a bag. Roll up the bag and tape! Store in fridge. My review: Ours tasted great but were a bit crumbly, which is why I'd follow another recipe like the one I linked above.

Get as clumpy as you like.

First, press the granola into an even layer before you put it in the oven. Then, stir it only once halfway through cooking. For really good clumps, press down on the finished granola before it cools and avoid jostling it on the pan until cooled completely.