DIY Granola!

I thought I’d share a little DIY project K’s been into lately: making homemade granola! Turns out, it’s way easy, way flexible, and way tasty.

We’re loving this stuff because we like cereal in the morning, but since we can’t eat refined sugar, most commercial brands are too sweet. We hacked some recipes to develop a version that’s loaded with nuts for protein, and low in sweeteners.

If you want to explore some recipes, my favorites are here, here, and here. But you can pretty much make it up as you go along. Basically, you mix up some oats and nuts, cinnamon, and maybe some flaked coconut, and then separately mix up the wet ingredients, which are also sweeteners.

You can adjust proportions quite a bit – K always reduces the liquid sweeteners to a single half-cup when he makes it, and adds more unsweetened applesauce. He just combines some molasses, honey, and agave nectar until the cup measure is full.

The key is to keep the ratio of wet ingredients and dry balanced, so that when you stir them together, you have a damp mixture that forms clumps, like this:

Then you bake the mix in a slow oven for a while, stirring periodically. This gently removes the moisture and leaves you with crunchy, slightly chewy cereal. And fills your house with amazing fragrance. After it cools, you can throw in your favorite dried fruits and store it in something airtight.

It’s delicious! And good for you. And fun.

…But apparently not as fun as napping in a sunny window.

Tagged as: recipe