I enjoy making homemade granola bars and other snack bars, especially when I am planning a long hike, road trip or other activity where I need to have a good supply of snacks. I typically make the bars in large baking pans, then cut them down to the size that I need. This system works well, but anyone who has made a homemade granola bar knows that cutting them neatly is sometimes easier said than done, especially because bars baked in those large pans tend to need a longer baking time to help them set. If you bake snack bars on a regular basis, you can make your life easier with a Snack Bar Pan from Williams-Sonoma. This particular pan is part of the kitchen retailer’s specialty line, a heavy-duty, gold-tone pan that is as pretty to look at as it is useful.
The pan bakes a dozen bars that measure 3 4/4 inches by 1 1/4 inches, which makes them roughly the size of a lot of the snack bars that you can buy in stores. The cavities of the pan are about 1/2-inch deep and have rounded corners, so nuts, seeds and other granola bar ingredients shouldn’t get stuck when you are ready to pop them out. The cavities should not be overfilled when making breakfast cookie-style bars made with a batter or dough, but you can easily pile up a granola mix if you’re working with a chunkier bar recipe. Once your bars are baked and cooled, you simply slide them out of the pan and you’re ready to pack!
Give my favorite granola bar recipes a try, whether you have the pan yet or not!
What do you think?