Monday, March 1, 2010

Granola in the oven

In my quest to make more of our food, I have granola in the oven (yes, Mom, call me crazy). We are having a hard time with breakfast now that I have banned sugary cereal from the menu. Currently the kids are eating lots of bagels and english muffins (maybe I will attempt those soon). I love cereal with milk though so decided to attempt granola. I found a recipe from Mark Bittman (NY Times writer). Here is what I did:

Ingredients
6 cups rolled oats (not quick-cooking or instant)
1/2 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup ground flax seed
1 cup dried shredded coconut, optional
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, or to taste
Dash salt
about 1/2 cup mixture of honey & real maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup raisins or chopped dried fruit, optional
Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine oats, nuts and seeds, coconut, cinnamon, salt and sweetener. Place on a sheet pan and put in oven. Bake for 30 minutes or a little longer, stirring occasionally. Mixture should brown evenly; the browner it gets without burning, the crunchier the granola will be.
2. Remove pan from oven and add raisins or dried fruit. Cool on a rack, stirring once in a while until granola reaches room temperature. Transfer to a sealed container and store in refrigerator; it will keep indefinitely.

We'll let you know how we like it later!

ETA: This is good with milk. Definitely not too sweet. It is also not clumpy at all, which is fine as long as you don't want more trail mix type granola. This would be good on yogurt too!

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