Frozen Granola Bars - No Mixer, No Oven, No Guilt

When granola started gaining popularity in Indonesia a few years ago, I got curious. Everyone claimed it was a healthy snack—rolled oats, raw honey, dried fruits. But then I realized: most of it was baked. Meaning, those beautiful enzymes in raw honey—gone. Antioxidants from dried fruit—toasted into oblivion. You’re mostly left with sugar and fiber. Store-bought versions didn’t help either—often packed with brown sugar, additives, even trans fat disguised behind a wholesome label. Oh, dear.

Then one slow scroll on Pinterest led me to this frozen granola bar recipe by Love & Lemons—and the rest is history. I’d never even imagined that granola bars could be frozen instead of baked. But here it was: simple, no pretension, truly healthy, and incredibly easy to make. Best part of it: No oven. No mixer. No drama.

Is it good?

It is uh-may-zing! Sweet, salty, nutty, chewy. Think caramel chocolate bars, but with oats and crushed peanuts—soft, satisfying, and kind to your tummy. I snacked on them on a beautiful, purply, slow afternoon... and again late at night before bed. Zero guilt. In fact—ahem—it helped digestion the next morning. 😌

Why I love this recipe

I’ve been baking since I was 6 years old, and believe me, I’ve seen how “healthy” snacks can be loaded with the not-so-healthy. So I made a few intentional tweaks to keep this one clean and honest:

Repost: Wholewheat Snickerdoodles

This very morning the crave for a good cinnamony biscuit hit hard and I remember this wonderful cookies I made back in 2009. Decided to repost because I think eventually I will have to move most of my posts in my archive blog here, just for practical reason. So here is my first repost. 

Expect to see other reposts soon :D

My Up and Coming Hero!

This is the wholewheat chocolate chips cookies I ranted about in the last post. Made it several times by now,  I keep craving for more. I tweaked the recipe to my liking and got me my best fool-proof version of comfort cookies. It is that good I am proud enough to include in my next Idul Fitri selection cookies to sell. It will be my up and coming hero!

Monkey Bread

It is Bread Week on Natural Cooking Club! Time to put your favorite bread recipe into action, knead and rise, bake and celebrate this humble food ever exists!

I love bread for its everything. Versatility, variety, history, and ultimately the fun of making it. Just like diving, you'll find what you specifically look for. If you seek adventure, you'll find one. Whether in yeasty dough, rustic starter sourdough, or the light soda bread and baking powder biscuit, you'll get a personal different experience you hardly forget. If you seek comfort, making it was like a meditation, and nothing can beat the comfort of home-baked bread coming right out of your own kitchen. If you need to get your creative juice running, endless of possibility was laid out in front of you, creating your own version of bread that adds to the already gigantic global variety. If you seek romantic past time reminiscing, the aroma will take you there, to the time where life was simple and problems were either to make loaves now or later after the strawberries were picked.

I love Monkey Bread. I love how it looks, how fun it is to make and eat, and how the unbeatable sweet cinnamon bursts in your mouth, covers your fingers to lick clean. I even love the name! For this Monkey Bread, I used my favorite Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread. Seriously, you can use any bread recipe you like, even biscuits, which I actually plan to make one with. The "monkey" is the shaping process. You ball the dough, dip it into melted butter, throw it in cinnamon sugar mixture to coat, arrange in a pan. You can add nuts or raisins to the cinnamon, add honey to the melted butter, anything you fancy. You can even fill the ball first before dipping and coating, i'm thinking.. cheese cream?

That's it. When you turn it out of the pan onto a plate, you get a beautiful mounded pull-out breads. 

Shiny, gooey, rustic. There, you get your monkey :)

Chocolate-Peanut Spread

I have this little book for 2 years now, "200 Chocolate Recipes" by Felicity Barnum-Bobb. I use it for food photography purpose and never tried any recipes in it. Until one night I was thinking it's time for the book to fulfill its destiny in my hand.

How I wished we grow hazelnuts locally in this country, coz a jar of homemade Nutella won't hurt at all. But I love peanuts just the same. I can finish a jar of Skippy crunchy peanut butter by myself and not feel guilty at all :). So when I poured the shiny chocolate spread into 2 half-pint mason jars, I couldn't help but feeling gleeful inside, almost could feel the dancing of two most delightful food in the world on my tongue already.

It was that good I felt like spooning all night. Literally :)

100% Whole Wheat Loaf

"Who says whole wheat bread has to be dense, dry, and tasteless? This 100% whole wheat recipe features the delightfully nutty taste of wheat in a fine-grained, moist, faintly sweet loaf."

You know what, they speak the truth. When I read the review, it didn't take long before I ran to baking store  and be back in my kitchen to try the recipe. By the time the sun smeared the sky purple in the afternoon, I've had a wondrous yeasty fragrant kitchen and the best home-baked wholewheat loaf for my afternoon tea. Could life be any sweeter?

I'd been in quest for a good one-hundred-percent wholewheat bread for quite some time that I almost gave up. They're always too dense, too dry, didn't taste really good, or I had to give up some part of the flour for white flour. But this, I love! Got it from King Arthur Flour website, tweaked a little bit, and I have a foolproof recipe I always can count on. Been baking this several times now and for me it's a life saver. Can't count on the so-called wholewheat loaf they sell in the bakeries, let alone supermarket. You have to find a European style bakery to get a full wholegrain bread in Jakarta. Last time I checked, only Vineth Bakery still sells this thing. Others only sell the fake ones, the ones contained only about 10-20% wholewheat flour in them. And they don't even taste good.

One afternoon I enjoyed it with homemade chocolate-peanut spread and fresh cheesecream, another time I had it with vegetables and homemade mayo for lunch. Call me wholewheat crazy, I'm happy.