Kitchen Little Essentials

For this Homemade Berry Nutri Grain Bars recipe, you will need:

In This Post

A sheet pan, for baking

A mixing bowl for the dough

A rolling pin is helpful

The idea of a homemade Nutri Grain Bar might seem silly or difficult or perhaps most notably – unnecessary. I mean, the good folks at Kellogg’s already make them, right? But, I personally love an easy baking project – one that takes little time and minimal ingredients/equipment to pull off. And these Homemade Berry Nutri Grain Bars fit the bill.

With a wholesome, whole grain dough and the assisted ease of a great store-bought jam, these are the simplest homemade Nutri grain bars I’ve tried (I’ve tested a few different methods/recipes). You can, of course, make and use your own berry jam here – go for it! But I think a nice all-fruit spread works really well. Plus, it saves loads of time. Feel free to use strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, schnozzberry … you get the idea.

How to Make Homemade Nutri Grain Bars

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Adjust your rack to the middle position.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, oats and salt. Mix well. Add the butter and, using your fingers, toss everything until the butter is coated, and broken down. You want to work it into the dry ingredients just as you would if you were making pie dough.
Once the butter is worked in, add the yolks, maple syrup, and vanilla. I like to use my hands for this, but keep a wooden spoon nearby as well. When your dough has come together nicely, transfer it to a flat, clean, floured work surface. Roll out until very thin, about 1/8-inch-thick. Cut into rectangles that measure about 4 inches by 5 inches.
Add heaping tablespoons of jam into the centers of each piece of dough and spread it out a bit, leaving about a 1/3-inch border around the edges. Seal the edges of the dough with a fork or your fingers, ensuring that there aren’t any openings. Transfer the filled, folded and sealed bars to a baking sheet. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or just until they’re lightly golden brown on top and around the edges. It’s okay if some jam seeps out.
Cool completely before eating or transferring. To store, keep in a sealed container in a cool, dry place for up to 4 days.

Homemade Berry Nutri Grain Bars: Tips and Tricks

A Coconut Oil Swap

If you want to bump up the health factor of these homemade bars, you can swap in coconut oil for the butter. I’ve done it and, while I don’t personally prefer it, it works almost as well for the dough here. It works because we’re not going for some flaky pastry type of dough here – this isn’t meant to be pie. We just need a fat to help pull and hold together the dry ingredients and to offer a soft suppleness to the bars once they’re baked.

If at first you don’t succeed …

I screwed up my first bar so royally, so completely, that I almost bagged the whole endeavor and moved on to the next recipe, the next project. But that would have been so lame and silly of me – who gives up on a new baking project after the first go?? No. Not I.

What I mean here, is that you may have to get your feet wet a little with the dough – mostly the filling of it and the folding of it. It might take doing one bar for you to get a feel and a muscle memory for the right amount of jam to use, and where to spread it and how to correctly seal it, etc. But you’ll get the hang of it quickly and then away you’ll go …

We get by with a little help from the store.

If you want to whip up a fresh berry jam – maybe your favorite recipe – that would be wonderful here. But I just reach for a store-bought all fruit spread, and it works great. The jam will get all melty and liquified to a degree as it heats up in the oven, so make sure you allow the bars to cool all the way down to room temp before eating/cutting. The warm jam will ooze out otherwise.