Tag: granola

Cooking 101 Beginner : Quick & Easy Basic Honey Granola

Making homemade granola these days is not selective to hippies guys! I love to make granola and other breakfast treats all the time and its super simple, but best of all, you tend to save tons of money! What could honestly be better than that. If you have 30-35 minutes, granola is easily within your reach. This recipe is also very basic, you can add 1/2 cup crushed up nuts or seeds (flax and walnut is a great combination), you can toss in dried fruits when the granola is done or you can leave it plain for sprinkling ontop of yogurt. (that’s what I like to do! =)

Ingredients:

4 cups old fashioned oats (not oat groats, not quick cooking oats, not steel cut oats)
1/4 cup olive oil
pinch salt (optional)
1 T vanilla extract (use the good stuff, you’ll thank yourself later)
1 T evaporated cane sugar or raw sugar
1 /4 cup + 1 tablespoon honey  (5 tablespoons total)  (use maple syrup for vegan version)
2 tablespoons water

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).

In a large bowl add in everything except the oats. Mix well. Add your oats 1 cup at a time and stir well. (don’t be afraid to use your hands, it really works best) After you have all your oats mixed in, let it sit for a couple minutes. 2-5 minutes is a long enough, very easy to do while your oven preheats.

Once your oven is preheated, take a full sheet pan and evenly spread your oat mixture on it. Pop it in the oven for 15 minutes.

(Above photo is granola mix about to go into the oven)

After 15 minutes take the pan out of the oven and stir/flip the oats with a flat spatula. Put it back in the oven for 15 more minutes.


(Above photo is granola mix after 15 minutes in the oven)Take the granola out of the oven again and stir.

(Above photo is granola after 30 minutes, some dark bits and perfect for me)
Depending on your personal taste you can stop now. If you want it darker, continue cooking in 5 minute intervuls instead you reach your desired doneness.

Prep time: 2-5 minutes  Cook time: 30-40 minutes Serves: 4 cups
allergies: honey***, oats**
**Can be gluten-free if you make sure you purchase gluten free oats!
***vegan friendly if you it without honey, maple syrup instead.

And you’re done! See how easy that was. You now have a healthy breakfast treat that costs next to nothing to make and little time spent. A traditional basica granola in a health food store costs $4.99 a pound, YIKES! However, this granola only cost me :

Oats: 53¢
olive oil: 25¢
salt & Sugar: 5¢
vanilla (homemade): 5¢ (store bought would be more like 40¢)
honey: 45¢
Water: free (my water bill is paid)

If we total that up we’re looking at a grand total of….  $1.33 for 4 cups of granola. Talk about saving money. That’s an approx savings of  $8.50! Even if you add in nuts and seeds, you will still save money compared to the granola at the health food store.  Assuming you used 1/4 cup of both flax seeds and walnuts and they were organic, you’re still only looking at about 1.50-2.00 more dollars. Oh and all the above ingredients were purchased organic except my homemade vanilla (purchased many years ago before I cared about organic, and bought in bulk. I got 5 pounds for only 25.00!)

I hope you will try this easy granola and let me know in the comments what YOU would put with it. Me personally, I enjoy my granola with some unsweetened almond milk or on-top of organic Greek yogurt with fresh seasonal fruits, yum yum!

Chocolate Banana Granola

NOTE: This is a re-post of an OLD recipe from 2009-2010 on my old wordpress blog before I got my own domain. Since I like this recipe. I have transferred it here. Any images marked with faylinameir.wordpress.com are still property of www.faylinameir.com and myself.

original date: January 27th, 2012 at 5:16am

Chocolate Banana Granola

Ingredients:

3 cups oats, soaked
2 ounces nuts (soaking optional), chopped
3 bananas
3 tablespoons ground cocoa
1/2 teaspoon oil
sweetener, optional & to taste

Directions:

In a blender, (or food processor) blend the bananas together with the ground cocoa, oil, and if needed the sweetener of your choice. When mixture is smooth, dump into a bowl with your oats, and nuts. Mix thoroughly. Place in your dehydrator at 110 degree for 12-20 hours.About 6-8 hours in, go ahead and break up the granola, this not only helps in drying but helps in the final product. The time depends on your environment, so after 12 hours, start checking, if you think it needs more time then give it more time.

I personally prefer almonds, cashews, and pecans in this recipe, but the nuts are your choice. Optionally you could use seeds instead of nuts, sunflower or pumpkin are my personal favorites. Enjoy!

Makes: 3 cups granola, Preparation time: 2mins, Cooking time: 12 – 20 hours

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Nutritional Breakdown.
Serving size 1/2 cup

(click photo for full size, rather big, but detailed as usual!)