Fruit Filled Granola Bars

There is a constant rotation of homemade granola bars in my fridge prepared and ready for morning snacks. I have a large variety of granola bars for all different food moods, Granola Bars, Super Food Granola Bars, Granola Bars with Chocolate Chips, Vanilla Cashew Almond Granola Bars, and Harvest Fruit Granola Bars to name a few. They have all kinds of fruits, nuts, seeds, oats and rice bubbles combinations and offer different flavours with peanut butter, vanilla, Tahini or honey. This Granola bar recipe fits into the loaded with fruit category.

Sometimes I become adventurous and drizzle melted chocolate over my granola bars for a little something extra but today my laziness totally took over. I theorised that since the oat mixture was still hot from the stove I could just push chocolate melts into the mixture and wait for them to just melt into perfect round chocolate blobs to top my granola bars.
This placement of chocolate buds turned out to be a great food preparation decision, my laziness was rewarded with beautiful looking and delicious fruit filled chocolate dotted granola bars.

Fruit Filled Granola Bars

3 cups old fashioned oats
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 – 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries (or other add-ins such as raisins or other dried fruits – chopped if you need to, nuts, sunflower seeds, pepitas, chocolate chips; all your favorite things!)
dark chocolate

Preheat the oven to 180C and scatter the oats on a large tray and bake for 15 minutes, stirring halfway through and line a square tin with baking paper.
Heat the oil in a small saucepan on the stove. Add the brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Bring to a simmer over medium high heat stirring to make sure the brown sugar dissolves.
Put the toasted oats in a large bowl and pour the hot liquid over the oats and stir to coat evenly. Stir in all your add-ins and scrape the mixture into the prepared tin.
Press the mixture into the tin, making sure the mixture fills to the corners, keep pressing so the granola is smooth across the pan. While still hot place chocolate pieces on top of the granola bars and gently press into the mixture.
Let the granola bars set in a cool dry place or in the fridge for at least an hour then turn them out of the pan onto a cutting board and slice into bars.