I love this recipe! I can’t believe I haven’t reviewed it yet for as often as I make it. I use 2 cups of puffed rice cereal (not Rice Krispies, but the plain ol’ puffed rice with a single ingredient of brown rice), 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and sometimes molasses instead of corn syrup. Sometimes I use almond butter instead of peanut butter, so it could be made quite allergy-friendly. As recommended, I mix everything except the mini chocolate chips (I tried full-size, and mini are better), let it cool slightly, then add the mini chips. Oh yum yum yum! It’s still quite sweet, so I’ve been playing with it, and I can replace some of the syrup/molasses with water with acceptable results. The trick to good results is to PRESS the bars into the pan. PRESS HARD. The less air, the more likely it is to stay in bar form! I use a piece of waxed paper to keep my hands (or lid) clean while pressing. Next I pop the pan in the freezer to make the bars easier to slice. I usually slice into 12 bars instead of 16 (too yummy to skimp) and wrap each one with press-n-seal (I’ve been happiest with that for this). Then I store the bars in the freezer until I need a snack. And when I remember I have these in the freezer, I can feel the need to snack building up! At least it’s healthier (and cheaper) than so many other snack choices. I’m a huge fan of recipes that are flexible, meaning they can be used as a starting point to make something different. Other dried fruit, nuts, coconut … just imagine this with chopped almonds and coconut instead of raisins! I’m sure that would be awesome too! This is the best kind of flexible recipe because I only measure the dry ingredients (fewer dishes to wash, and I just rinse after dry stuff), and I get good results eyeballing the sticky stuff.

These were very tasty. I doubled the recipe and used a jelly roll pan to make a bunch to freeze. I replaced the raisins with chopped dates, and added a couple tablespoons of ground flax and chia seeds because I knew I could hide them in there pretty easily. Forgot to add the chocolate chips. Will make again!

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