Homemade Granola

Back in high school and college, cereal was pretty much my breakfast of choice everyday. My all time favorite has got to be raisin nut bran but I'm also a big fan of banana nut crunch, the mini wheats with fruit inside, apple cinnamon cheerios, great grains... yea, I like a lot of cereals. But nowadays, I don't eat it nearly as much simply because I find that whenever I have cereal for breakfast, I can barely make it to my 10 AM meeting without my stomach growling... I need more substantial and nutritious breakfasts to start off my day. 

One of my go-to breakfast is plain Greek yogurt and a drizzle of honey topped with lots of fruit and granola. The protein from the yogurt plus the vitamins in the fruit help start my day off right and granola helps fill me up while adding some delicious crunch to the mix. You have to be a bit careful with granola though. Sometimes it's sneakily not so good for you, loaded with sugar and empty calories. While there are plenty of good choices on the market out there, I've also been toying around with the idea of making my own for a while now, and the other day I finally took a stab at it. While I would tweak it a bit next time around (which I'll write about below), I think it turned out well! And the possibilities for customizing this recipe are endless so I'll definitely be making my own granola again! 

The basic parts of granola are the dry base (this makes up the majority of the recipe, generally oats and sometimes other grains), mix-ins (most often dried fruits and nuts but feel free to get creative), a sweetener (brown sugar, honey, agave, maple syrup, etc.), and some sort of liquid binder to hold everything together (sometimes the sweetener pulls double duty and also acts as the binder). 

Because I'm obsessed with peanut butter, I wanted to try giving my granola a hint of a peanut butter taste, which I thought would pair nicely with maple flavor as a sweetener. I also had some extra Kashi seven grain cereal that I found to be a bit bland on its own but worked perfectly to bulk up this granola, so that's where my recipe began.

First, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a medium/large bowl, combine oats with the puffed grain (if you don't want to go out and buy Kashi just for this recipe, just sub in another similar cereal or double the oats) and add-in your nuts. Now at this point, I also added in my dried fruit -- golden raisins and chopped dates. However, while the raisins held up just fine in the oven, some of the smaller pieces of dates got burnt and I ended up having to pick them out by hand and throw them away. So I'd suggest putting in the raisins but holding off on the dates and adding them in a few minutes before the granola is done. If you decide to use another dried fruit mix-in such as apricots, bananas, apples, cranberries, etc., just do a quick google search to see how it will hold up in the heat to decide whether to add now or later. Of course chocolate chips would also make a delicious (if not quite as nutritious) mix-in but that you obviously wouldn't add until the granola is done and completely cool.

For the liquid binder, I whisked together peanut butter and water and poured this over the dry ingredients along with the maple syrup I used as my sweetener. My syrup was sugar free and relatively thin. If yours is thicker, you may want to use less so its not too sweet and increase the amount of water you use. 

Now just spread your mixture out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or wax paper, keeping some clusters but breaking up any really large clumps so it cooks evenly. Sprinkle on some cinnamon and put it in the oven, stirring every 5-10 minutes. My granola was done in about 20 minutes - nice and toasted and yummy! Store in an airtight container or a ziplock bag with all the air squeezed out of it so it stays fresh. 

One last thing for today: a quick product review/shout out about these Barry's Bakery French Twists. I randomly came across these in the health food aisle of my grocery store and decided they'd be my impulse buy for the day. I'm really quite impressed! They contain no butter, eggs, yeast, or dairy so naturally, they've got to be gross right? Wrong -- these babies are good! They taste kind of like a lighter churro. They're great on their own, but I've also broken them up and sprinkled on top of yogurt for a healthy snack. If you're looking for more of a treat, you could pair them with frozen yogurt or dip in chocolate sauce. There's several flavors but so far I've only tried the original cinnamon kind. You'll have to let me know if you try another!

Homemade Granola

1 c. oats
1 c. puffed cereal (such as Kashi 7 Whole Grain Cereal Puffs) 
1 tbsp almonds, chopped
2 dates, chopped
1.5 tbsp golden raisins
1.5 tbsp peanut butter 
3.5 tbsp water
3 tbsp sugar free maple syrup 
Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 

Combine oats, puffed cereal, nuts, and golden raisins. In small bowl, whisk together peanut butter and water. Pour peanut butter mixture and maple syrup over dry ingredients while stirring. 

Spread granola on baking sheet covered with wax or parchment paper. Sprinkle on some cinnamon to taste. Bake for 15 minutes, stirring halfway through. Add in dates and bake for another approximately 5 minutes until toasted.