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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Homemade Granola

I always feel a little uppity when I tag on the phrase "homemade" to a recipe. I feel the same way about "organic". With this recipe and the other ones I have titled "homemade", I did so because this is something I would normally buy. So it's granola, but I made it at home. Glad I clarified that. I don't want to come off as a yuppie.

The word granola conjures up certain memories in my brain. Memories of my once-mean older sister Megan. She used to be quite rotten to me (like most older sisters are) and then the Good Lord told her to grow up and be grateful for me. I do make good food and I won't share with someone who is mean. Anyways, when I was in my awkward early teen years, Megan used to be mean and call me a granola. Apparently, I was weird, had no sense of normal clothing and didn't know how to wear makeup. I am not sure if "granola" was the right term. Maybe just painfully uncouth.


This is more of a clusters-type of granola. The oat flour helps hold the clusters together. Clusters are good because they provide for easy snacking.

This recipe provides for a pretty self-designed granola. You add whatever fruits, nuts and seeds you want. For this particular batch, I added sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, almonds, raisins and dried cranberries. But the possibilities are endless. Some ideas:

Nuts you could use:
Pecans, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, peanuts, macadamia nuts, pistachios.

Seeds you could use:
Sunflower, pumpkin, flax seeds.

Dried fruit you could use:
Raisins, cranberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, strawberries, mangoes, pineapple, apples, bananas, prunes, dates, peaches, apricots.

With the dried fruit, make sure you chop it up if needed.



5 cups quick oats
2 Tbsp ground flax seed
3 cups seeds or chopped nuts
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/2 tsp mace
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup water
1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
Dried fruit, however much you prefer

Set the oven to 300 degrees.

In the bowl of a food processor or in a blender, add half the oats (2 1/2 cups). Grind, making oat flour. In a large mixing bowl, add the oat flour, quick oats, seeds and nuts, cinnamon, cardamom, mace and nutmeg. Stir well to combine.

In a medium saucepan over high heat, add the brown sugar, butter and water. Stir until the butter is melted and the mixture bubbles. Remove from heat and add the salt and vanilla. Pour brown sugar mixture over the oat mixture and stir to combine. If the mixture seems a little bit dry, you can add a little more water.

On two greased cookie sheets, spread the oat mixture. Using your fingers, make small mounds of the oat mixture all over the cookie sheet. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove cookie sheet from the oven. Using a spatula, break up the mounds into bite-size clusters. Put the sheets back in the oven, but be sure they have switched places (the one that was on the bottom is now on top). Bake for 45 for minutes, stopping every 15 minutes to toss the granola and alternate the cookie sheets.

Once baked, remove from oven and let cool on the cookie sheets. Once cooled, add however much dried fruit you want. Store granola in an air-tight container. Serve over yogurt, sprinkle over muffins before baking, eat with cold milk, stir into oatmeal or just eat it by the handful.

Credit for the gist of this recipe goes to The Traveler's Lunchbox

7 comments:

Megan said...

Granola.

My crazy crazy life said...

Two things:

You said to add fried fruit...yeah baby, that's my kind of granola.

How long does this keep in a tupperware thingy?

Janeen said...

Thanks Whit - I'm always up to try out a new granola recipe.

Kalli said...

this looks derishous

I've been wanting to attempt some homemade granola for a while now and maybe I'll actually do it.

One question though, what is mace?

Michelle @ Twig said...

Granola is my breakfast must have but I have yet to create a granola that looks clumped like yours. What would you say the trick is???

Unknown said...

DELICIOUS. just made this!

Jelli said...

I made this granola yesterday and it was really yum. I didn´t add flax, forgot the vanilla, and halved the sugar. All in all really tasty, but learn from my mistake and do not reduce sugar so drastically. It´s still good, but best over sweetened yogurt.