Try these as easy travel snacks, work snacks or last minute Halloween Treats.
Use your favorite granola flavors and mix in some tasty sweet treats. It's a quick and easy way to create your own bite sized granola snacks to pack away when you travel, shop, work, or watch the kids at their sports games. Wrap them in plastic and tuck into a purse or in an airtight container in a cooler for later. Plus, they make great last minute Halloween party treats!
This is an easy way to use your favorite granola cereal, or granola bites along with tasty sweet treats left over from other sweet treat recipes. I usually have a few candies, sprinkles, chips, candy melts or other items left over when I’m done with other recipes I’ve made. So, I tuck them away in airtight containers in my pantry for later. Maybe I’ll use them in cookies, cake, bars or even a Bundt cake. If I don’t get to use them and get tired of seeing them every time I go in the pantry for something else, I make a decision to create something that is delicious and easy to make. They taste soooo good!
I’ve taken my leftover treats to create a variety of granola snacks for a variety of flavors from the base of maple pecan granola to nuts to red hot candies. Try the with your own flavor bases to make your family happy.
So, what do you have in your cupboard or pantry? Any gummies? Use them in these granola treats. Leftover chocolate or butterscotch chips? Use them in these granola treats. Leftover yogurt covered coffee beans? Use them in these granola treats. Leftover red hot candies? Use them in these granola treats. Your creativity is only limited by the thousands of treats available out there.
Combine your sweet treats with flavored granola bits or bites, melt chocolate chips and mix together. Then, spoon them out as small or as large as you like. Bite size or two-bite size, or even dinner plate sized. Before they cool, place an identifying treat on top so people know what’s inside. If you have pecans inside place a pecan on top so everyone knows what’s inside. I especially like the white chips melted with red hots inside and a few more on top of the white candy melts. They are hot inside and out!
This recipe that is not a recipe, serves however many you want to make.
- Maybe start out with one bag of candy melts and a number of sweet treats, nuts and dried fruit. Adjust as you go along as you see how many treats you are making.
- Small bite sized dollops allow you to make more than if you were dropping large dollops. Start with smaller amounts…you can always increase for more servings.
Prepare your pan:
- Use any large baking pan lined with a sheet of parchment paper so cleanup is easy. You’ll want to place the warm wet treats on a pan so you can easily place the entire pan in the refrigerator to set fast.
Gather up your Ingredients:
- What do you have in the cupboards for granola bits and bites? What about a crunchy cereal? I used my maple pecan granola. It adds a nice mellow flavor in the final granola treats. You use the flavors you like, whether you are using granola or crispy crunchy cereal.
- Pull out a few sweet treats from the cupboard or pantry. Use up all those extras you have saved over the last few months.
- Line up the sweet treats on the counter or on a large board.
- How about nuts? Any peanuts, pecans, almonds or walnuts on hand? Pull them out.
- Do you have any dried fruit? Raisins? Dried banana chips? Dried cranberries or blueberries? The dried fruit adds another layer of flavor to your treats. Use them.
- What do you have for melting chocolates or chips? Arrange them on the counter, too.
- Don’t forget about sprinkles. Use color related sprinkles for holiday treats or mix them up for a different look.
- Look at what you have and decide ahead of time how you want to mix and match the flavors and colors. This saves time when those candy melts are hardening in the bowls.
Melt Mix and Drop:
- Put your candy melts in small bowls keeping colors separated unless you want to combine them for a different color.
- Place the bowls in the microwave, one at a time, and melt according to package directions.
- I don’t heat them as long as the packages direct since I don’t want the melted candies to end up really thin. If the candy melts are a little thick, they will not spread very much, which is what I want. I like them to be like little mounds of sweetness, not wide, flat candies. It’s whatever you prefer. If you want them thin and spread, melt the candy melts for the full time as directed on the packages.
- Next, mix in some granola or crunchy cereal with your melted candy melts or chips. Add a tablespoon or so at a time so you get used to the ratio of crunchy to candy melts. I make some with a lot of granola and others with less granola. There’s no right or wrong. You make them the way you like.
- When you have the mixture the way you like it, use a teaspoon to spoon out the mixture and another teaspoon to drop the dollops onto the parchment paper.
- Before they dry, place an identifying fruit, nut or other treat on top. If you have pecans inside the granola treat, place one on top so people know what they are getting into. (My hubby got into the treats today before I could explain what they were…and he immediately crunched into a coffee flavored granola treat that had yogurt covered coffee beans and fresh ground hazelnut coffee on top. He was caught by surprise by the flavor since he does NOT like coffee…but, he admitted it was pretty good!)
- Place the pan in the refrigerator for a few minutes to cool and set the granola treats…10-20 minutes.
They are ready to serve!
Storage:
- Wrap them individually in plastic wrap and keep in an airtight container (not necessarily in the refrigerator) for easy access for a week or so.
- Or line a tin gift box with sheets of parchment paper and layer the Granola snacks between the paper.
- I don’t usually freeze them, but I’m sure they will last there for a week or two, maybe longer. Buy, why? Don’t hoard them…share them with your family or friends!
These are fun to make:
The flavors I combined today included white, chocolate and orange candy melt, with most containing maple pecan granola inside:
- M&M’s on top with granola inside
- Yogurt covered coffee beans with ground hazelnut coffee sprinkled on top
- Pecans inside and on top
- Red hot candies inside and red hots with a gummy candy on top
- Peanuts inside and dried banana chips on top
- Lightly salted almonds inside and almonds on top
- Malted milk balls inside with pumpkin flavored malted ball on top
- Raisins inside and on top
- Pecans inside with Heath Bar bits on top
Get the family involved:
Get the kids involved. Of course, have an adult melt the candy melts. The bowls can get hot! Have fun combining different flavors and textures, talking with the kids about how to combine different colored candy melts to get other colors. Pull up a color wheel online for color combo planning.
Experiment with different textures. How does your favorite crunchy cereal taste with different nuts or gummy treats? There are really not rules for creating your Granola Snacks…just have fun and enjoy! However your make your Granola Snacks, “Bake your own Memories!”