Crispy Chocolate and Peanut Butter Granola

We’ve already established that I love those crispy, chewy granola bars and I’m always on the look out for snacks like that so when I found this recipe I was almost angry with myself for not coming up with it on my own. Granola…with Rice Krispies in it. It’s so simple and obvious! It’s basically those granola bars without the extra step of making bars. I’ve always liked granola but it turns out this one simple addition was all I needed to fall in love with it.

Of course, it’s not quite as simple as adding some rice cereal to oats. The thing that makes this granola a real treat is the chocolate. The oats and cereal (and pecans if you want, I left them out) are coated in a chocolate-honey mixture and everything is baked until it’s nice and toasty. Then to make it extra good (and healthier) the granola is topped off with some dried cherries or cranberries. Eat this chocolate granola with milk like a cereal (with bonus chocolate milk left over!) or sprinkle it on your yogurt or you can just do what I do and stuff handfuls of it in your mouth. This granola is ridiculously addictive.

Since I enjoyed the chocolate granola so much, I thought it would be fun to make a peanut butter version, too. I replaced the chocolate with peanut butter and added in some peanuts and raisins. OH. MY. GOD. I’m a big fan of chocolate and will pretty much always pick it over peanut butter but if you made me choose between the chocolate and peanut butter versions of this granola I think the peanut butter granola wins by a nose (or a peanut?). But you don’t need to choose between them, just make both! Even better, make both and then mix them together in one bowl. Peanut butter cup granola! (Seriously, do it!)

This granola is so simple and only takes 10 or 15 minutes to mix up. The hardest part for me was waiting for the granola to cool completely after I took it out of the oven!

Site News: New Recipe Box

If you come over to the site today, perhaps wanting to save or print out this recipe you’ll notice some new features. I’ve teamed up with ZipList so that you can save recipes from Back to the Cutting Board to your universal recipe box. If you haven’t heard of ZipList, it’s a handy (and free!) service for creating and managing grocery lists. I’ve been trying it out for a little awhile and have been happy with how much easier my weekly meal planning has been. A lot of my favorite food bloggers and recipe sites already have ZipList integrated, so once I signed up for an account I was able to save my favorite recipes from those sites and with one click I was able to add the ingredients I needed to my grocery list. Then at the grocery store I can open up their app on my phone and check each item off as I pick it up. I’m generally very cautious about recommending products/services on this blog but I’m impressed with this service and I think it will only get better as more bloggers and recipes sites add the recipe box feature to their sites. (They even have a WordPress plugin if you’re interested in adding it to your blog!)

You’ll need to sign up for an account first if you haven’t already. After that, just click the “Add to Recipe Box” button by any recipe on this site to add it to your account. To access your recipe box, click on the link under Recipe Tools on the left side navigation or click the big red “Recipe Box” link on the sidebar.

Important Note: You may remember (or have used) the previous recipe box feature I had on Back to the Cutting Board. I think ZipList is going to be a better option for most people since it’s a service that’s used on many websites and can be accessed so many different ways. But I know from my stats that people did use the previous recipe box, so I’ve decided not to remove that feature for now. However, I’ve renamed it Favorites to makes things less confusing. So if you want to keep using that to save recipes for later or if you just want to access your saved recipes so you can re-save them to ZipList go to your favorites page here or access it from the navigation on the left side of the site (in the Recipes menu).