Homemade Granola Bars

I was recently at Safeway when I reached for a box of Granola bars...

*You see I belong to the group of people who like to sleep until the absolute last minute; afterward having planned out the exact amount of time it takes to get ready before I have to go to work. So a easy accessible breakfast is essential to my scheme. But the granola bar breakfast has always been a begrudging one for me. The basic brand name tend to have a acidic and almost chemically aftertaste where the natural organic types are tasty but very expensive. *

I stopped myself and thought, "what exactly am I buying?", oatmeal, granola, usually some sort of sweet fruit or chocolate, and something to bind them all together. Well screw that, I usually have most of that stuff at home. And Hell, at that point I had ALL that stuff at home.

Granola Bar base:

Oatmeal
Granola
melted butter (approximately 1/2 a stick)
melted honey - 2 Tbsp.
1 Egg - whisked (for adhesive)

mix together until all the dry ingredients are coated with the butter/honey mixture. At this point you can add any other ingredients you like. I had a few things on hands from making cookies recently so I added...

Chocolate chips
Coconut shavings
Brown sugar to taste

Pack the ingredients tightly into a round cake pan as if you were making a crust layer (oatmeal pie crust, I must remember this for later.) I baked this at 350 degrees until... uh.. until it smelled good. 10-15 minutes? I don't know. I have found that this recipe sticks heavily to even nonstick cake pans but I believe that parchment paper will fix this problem. Refrigerating them or even freeing them overnight allows the bars to be cut into squares and individually wrapped, however, they rarely make it to that stage.