King Arthur Flour’s AFS Bars
July 7th, 2011 | Author: Alysha
Happy Thursday! Although we just came off a long weekend, I’m in desperate need of a personal day. When I’m having “one of those days,” sitting on the couch in my PJ’s eating popcorn and watching a movie sounds so tempting. Yesterday, I decided to channel that energy into one of my training runs for the Fox Cities Half Marathon.
Week 2, Day 3: 3 mile run
I’m following Hal Higdon’s traning program for novice runners. Although I completed my first half last year, I constantly battled plantar fasciitis and runner’s knee. My goal this time to complete training without getting injured again. I look at races this way: It’s your race. Don’t let someone else’s speed/timing/goals affect you. I find a lot of people compete against each other while running, but for me, It’s more about competing against myself.
I also added an additional 3.5 miles of walking throughout the day. All this activity revs up my appetite, so I pretty much dove headfirst into one of Brenton’s bars when I got home. I made a batch of my famous homemade granola and he used it as a base to make King Arthur Flour’s AFS Bars. Although they aren’t the healthiest bars (they use one whole stick of butter, which I would never do), I’ll let things slide when Brenton decides to get in the kitchen and bake (a very very rare occurrence).
These bars are from King Arthur Flour’s 200th Anniversary Cookbook. They are more cake-like than a granola bar, but you can play around with the recipe a bit to suit your tastes.
AFS Bars
Makes about 14 bars
Ingredients
1 stick of butter
1 cup brown sugar (the recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups, but this was plenty sweet)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups granola
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 11 x 7″ pan with cooking spray. Set aside.
2. In a large saucepan, melt butter. Stir in sugar. Remove from heat and let cool. Beat in eggs and add vanilla.
3. In a separate mixing bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and granola. Add the butter mixture until combined.
4. Spread the batter into your pan and bake for 30 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack and enjoy.
Next time: I’ll use half butter and half applesauce. I’ve tried this with several quick breads, muffins and cakes with great results. I’d also like to try adding more granola (to make them less cake-like) and incorporate some ground flax or wheat germ for extra nutrition.
Question: What’s your running/exercise philosophy? What fuels your runs?
-Alysha
Posted in 
Hey Alysha! I recently read a book called Performance Nutrition for Runners and I think you would probably enjoy reading it! It gave me a new perspective on pre- and post-training and racing fueling. I would recommend it to any runner.
that sounds like the perfect book for me. Do you know who wrote it?
Actually, is this from Runner’s World? I wanted to reserve it from the library, but they didn’t have it. Where did you find it?
I bought it at Barnes and Noble. If you don’t mind waiting a few weeks, you can borrow my copy – someone else is reading it right now.