Welcome back to campus for the new academic year, Jays! As the semester is starting to kick into high gear, you’ll need a tasty breakfast to fuel your day. There isn’t always time in the morning for a full meal at the Marketplace, so here’s a recipe for homemade breakfast bars to keep on hand and grab when you’re on the go.
To start, you’ll need brown sugar, creamy peanut butter (or another nut butter of your choice), light corn syrup, vanilla extract, old-fashioned oats, crispy rice cereal and chocolate chips. Additionally, be sure to prepare a microwave-safe bowl and a larger bowl for mixing, as well as a baking pan to shape the bars and cooking spray to coat the pan.
If you’d rather spend Jaybucks than cash, you can find peanut butter and chocolate chips in the Jay’s Nest, though I recommend using mini chocolate chips so they don’t end up overpowering the other ingredients.
Once you’ve got everything together, add half a cup of packed brown sugar, half a cup of peanut butter and a quarter cup of corn syrup into the microwave-safe bowl. Cover the bowl and microwave it on high for about a minute. Next, stir the mixture and microwave it for another minute.
Transfer the mixture to the larger bowl and add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, two cups of oats and one and a half cups of the cereal. Stir everything together until it is evenly mixed. Then, add a quarter cup of chocolate chips.
Scoop the mixture into the coated baking pan and press it down firmly to make sure it’ll hold its shape. I recommend using a nine inch by nine inch pan, since it will create the most reasonably-sized bars.
Let the bars cool, then cut them down to your desired size. Enjoy!
To store the bars, you can keep them in the pan with a layer of cling film or tin foil on top to prevent them from becoming stale, or you can move them to a tupperware container. They may be a little tricky to take out of the pan at first, but the cooking spray should keep them from sticking.
With the corn syrup and chocolate chips, the bars turn out sufficiently sweet while still containing enough fibers to start your day off right. The peanut butter flavor also ends up very prominent, though if you reduce the amount used, the bars may not stick together as well and become somewhat crumbly.
Overall, I’d recommend giving this recipe a try. One batch makes quite a few, so you’ll be set for a week or two of classes—unless you decide to share them with your friends!
