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 Home > Features > Recipes > Oat Graham Raisin Energy Bar recipe
Oat Graham Energy Bars
This recipe by Anna Rinehart, as it originally appeared on the KWTV news website a number of years ago, is as follows:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 cup plain rolled oats
½ cup wheat germ
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup raisins
1 can (14 oz.) fat free sweetened condensed milk
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray 13 inch x 9 inch baking pan with cooking spray (I recommend butter. See step #6). In medium bowl, combine cracker crumbs, oats, wheat germ, cinnamon, and raisins. Add condensed milk and mix well. Stir in orange juice and vanilla. Spread evenly in prepared pan. Bake 25 minutes or until center springs back when touched lightly. Cut into 24 bars.
Estimated nutrition facts per bar: 130 calories, 27 g carbs, and 1.2 g fat per bar.
#1 Back to top 
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Here are all the ingredients required to make the oat graham raisin
energy bars. There aren't too many items and you'll find that this
recipe is almost as simple as they come. I had some trouble locating
wheat germ at my local grocery. But a helpful employee directed me to
the cereal aisle where I was pleased to find two options: regular lightly toasted
and honey crunch. I selected the regular wheat germ as the recipe
specified, but made a mental note to come back for the honey crunch next time.
By the way, our friends at Kretschmer tell
us that wheat germ is nothing to be afraid of. In fact, it's good for you.
Wheat germ is the “heart” of the wheat kernel - a concentrated
source of several essential nutrients including Vitamin E, folate (folic
acid), phosphorous, thiamin, zinc and magnesium.
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#2 Back to top
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Yum! Here are all the dry ingredients in the mixing bowl. Clockwise
from the upper left: raisins, crushed graham crackers, wheat germ, oats,
and cinnamon.
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#3 Back to top
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When you mix all the dry ingredients together it looks like this.
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#4 Back to top
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Now add the liquids. Stir in the condensed milk first, then add
the orange juice and vanilla extract.
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#5 Back to top
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Now with the all the ingredients combined in the bowl, the mixture begins
to resemble something that might taste pretty good. The condensed milk
does a wonderful job of adhering the dry components into a sticky blob.
It would be very tempting to use regular condensed milk, but the recipe calls
for fat free so we must follow... besides, this is supposed to be an energy
bar.
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#6 Back to top
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Most recipes have you begin preheating the oven before you start mixing ingredients.
I always wait until I know I have a something that I can reasonably assume
will turn out. For this recipe, I turned the oven dial to 350 degrees F when the
mixture was ready to transfer to the baking pan. I wasn't exactly racing through this
process so the oven had plenty of time to preheat.
Before you take that blob from your mixing bowl and place it into your 9x13 baking pan,
coat the pan with butter. Don't use a cooking spray. Trust me. I used cooking spray
and then had to rent a jackhammer with a spade bit to extract the bars (See #8).
I think because this recipe doesn't have a lot of oil and because the consistency is
gritty, when you spread the mixture into the pan a lot of the cooking spray gets displaced.
You end up with minor disaster waiting to happen.
So, coat the pan with butter. Then spread the mixture across the bottom. You
might think that you're not going to reach the edges, but take your time and it will
eventually spread to all sides.
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#7 Back to top
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Now bake it for about 25 minutes at 350 degrees F. You should pull it out when
the center springs back when touched lightly. It should have a nice golden brown color.
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#8 Back to top
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Don't say I didn't warn you. Use butter to coat the pan not cooking
spray. Here are a few casualties of the extrication.
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#9 Back to top
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Cut into 24 bars and serve! I actually made these for an office holiday party
These bars joined calorie-laden brownies, kringle, and other rich pastries on
the breakroom table. The energy bars along with the rest of the goodies scattered
among the 200 or so employees. I wonder what people thought as they bit into this bar.
It doesn't have the sugar rush that one might expect, but it's good food. You can
eat more than one piece and not be handicapped by a dense calorie ball in your gut. It
truly is good energy food.
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#10 Back to top
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Here's a close-up of the texture in the oat graham raisin energy bars.
Nothing magic happens in the baking process. The contents do "meld"
together and the surface gets a nice chewy crust, but otherwise all the
ingredients can still be distinguished.
Eat up!
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