Chocolate Chip Banana Oatmeal Bars

Sick of grabbing the same super-sweet, processed granola bars every morning? Studded with banana chunks and chocolate chips, these hearty oat bars will satisfy your breakfast cravings and sustain you through those long late morning meetings. Oh, and those necessary four o’clock snacks? They’re good for that too.

The bananas:
Extra-ripe bananas are a key ingredient, boosting the bars’ sweetness as well as bringing additional moisture and richness. Just as when making banana bread, the ideal bananas for these bars should be well-spotted and almost completely blackened—although not bruised!—and easily mashable. If one of the bananas in your bunch is not quite as ripe as the others, set it aside and save it to cut into chunks. It’s better if that banana is a little less ripe, anyway.

Storage & freezing:
These bars will keep well stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the refrigerator for a week. (Spoiler alert: They’re even better after a few days, when all the flavors have had time to meld.) You can also freeze them in an airtight container for up to a month or—highly recommended—in individual bags or wrapped separately in plastic wrap. Then you can just grab one whenever you need a quick snack and pop it in the microwave for a few seconds or simply let it defrost on your morning commute.

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