This easy granola recipe is not an overly sweet. It's why I like eating it all the time. This best part is the crunch, not chew, CRUNCH. I can hardly hear my kids going on about what happened to SpongeBob while I'm eating it, the crunching drowns out their narratives. Bless their little hearts.
You'll find this recipe makes a lot of granola and it takes 2-hours to bake. It's best to make it before bedtime. You read that correctly, before bed. Leaving the baked granola to slowly cool down in the oven overnight seems to be the magic trick to getting the crunch. It stores well for as long as three to four weeks in glass jars with good lids.
There's something about granola in a big glass jar on the counter. It seems to say, "This is a healthy, happy kitchen. Eat up!"
HERE'S ALL IT TAKES
- 10 cups old fashion oats
- 2 cups other grains (any variety six grain mix, steel cut oats)
- 2-4 cups nuts/seeds (mix them up almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds )
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 tablespoon salt
Stir all the dry ingredients together, then add:
- 1 1/2 cup oil
- 1 3/4 cup water
- 1 large jar almond butter or creamy peanut butter
Heat oven to 250ºF.
Mix well and place on three 9-inch by 13-inch pans. Bake for 1 hour. Stir; bake 1-hour longer. Stir, again.
NEXT, turn OFF the oven and leave granola in there for several hours to cool. Store in air-tight containers. Granola has been known to keep well up to 3 weeks before being completely consumed.
Oh man! That looks so good! I wish I could whip up a batch of this right now! Have a great weekend Jill!
I just have to say WOW!!! Can you say YUM!?!? I made a batch of this last night, and it is better than the expensive gourmet granola I get at my local health food store (which costs $4 per box for a fraction of this amount). I’ve always tried to get my (now 13yo) son to eat oatmeal for breakfast, and he’s always hated it no matter how I make it or what I add to it. He’s a cold cereal eater at heart. He devoured this! Thank you for another FABULOUS recipe!
I do have to mention a few things to remember when making this:
1- Look at the number of cups of dry ingredients and make sure to use the most *gigantic* mixing bowl you can find to mix this up. Trust me on this one.
2-If you don’t have three 9×13 pans, a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan works nice, too. So long as the mixture is kind of thin (say 1-1.5″ thick) on the bottom to allow it to dry out.
3- After everything was mixed, mine looked like slightly wet cookie dough. This was a surprise to me (i.e. thought I’d wrecked it!), but I just spread it into the pans anyway. However, stirring as directed allowed me to break it into smaller chunks by the time it dried out again. My guess is, you could probably make granola bars very easily with this if you cut it before it’s completely dry instead of stirring it. Ever tried it?
By the way, I didn’t have any sunflower seeds on hand (which I wanted to use), so I used sunflower butter (which was sitting in my fridge begging to get used up), and pecans. It is devine!! I can’t wait to experiment with different nuts/nut butters. I have a feeling it won’t be long till this batch is gone, so I won’t have long to wait.
Definately a keeper!!