Saturday, November 21, 2009

Alton Brown's Granola

We're driving to California in three days and I just spent the afternoon baking snacks for the road trip. Cooling now are granola bars from Good Eats' "Power Trip" episode. Next time I'm going to see if I can make this less expensive (and drop the butter for margarine to make it vegan) but I wanted to do the math to see how expensive my endeavor was. (And I'll comment on the taste later... once I've had a chance to taste a bar.)



AmountIngredientCost
8 ozrolled oats$0.25
1.5 ozraw sunflower seeds$0.26
3 ozsliced almonds$1.83
1.5 ozwheat germ$0.83
6 ozhoney$1.25
1.75 ozdark brown sugar$0.22
1.25 ozunsalted butter$0.15
2 tspvanilla extract$0.60
1/2 tspsalt$0.00
6.5 ozdried fruit*$3.25

For a total of $8.64
*I used half apricot, a quarter cherries, and a quarter blueberries.


The best I can do in describing the taste of these granola bars is "a better tasting Quaker Chewey Granola bars and without the chemical aftertaste." So I'll use that as my comparison:


The recipe yielded 29 oz of granola bars, the equivalent of 34 and a half Quaker Chewey Granola Bars, which would clock in at $8.11 over at Amazon. So... not thrifty today. I saved -6.5%.


On my next pass I'll try replacing the dried fruit with rasins, which should bring me close to the taste of Quaker's bars while also saving me $2.08 for the batch. That would be 19% savings, putting it into the "thrifty" category.

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