Recipe - Simple Granola

By request, which I am sure you'd want this to go with your crockpot yogurt  anyways - is my simple granola recipe.

Simple Granola

What I mean by simple is that you basically dump the ingredients into a bowl, bake said ingredients for a bit, let cool & then nosh.
I promise its that easy. I do this once a month so keep that in mind for the quantities I'm about to list below.

Things you'll need:

Big ass bowl - the biggest one you got
4 cups of oatmeal (not the instant kind nor steel cut oats)
3/4 cup of vegetable or canola oil ( I never notice the difference between the two oils)
1/2 cup of maple syrup - yes really maybe even more if you have a sweet tooth
1 tablespoon of molasses
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
1+ tablespoons of cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 cup of walnuts or almonds (optional) - I added a mixture of both to mine.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
Grab a cookie sheet or two and your favorite flipper/spatula/pancake turner the debate is still out on what those things are really called.

Go ahead and mix all of your ingredients making sure that your maple syrup and oil is incorporated well.
Thinly spread your mixture onto your cookie sheets.

Pop into your preheated oven for 15-20 minutes - you should start to smell the cinnamon & vanilla wafting around in your kitchen at this point. Take it out move things around a bit with your flipper utensil so everything gets nicely toasted then pop it back in for another 10 to 15 minutes or more it really depends on your oven.

Once the mixture is cooled you can add some dried fruit.
To the batch pictured in this post I added:
1 cup of raisins
1 cup of craisins
1/2 cup of goji berries (because I'm fancy)
1/2 cup of dried apricots chopped
1/2 cup of dried apples chopped
Any dried fruits are great really.

And I'll be honest I pulled those measurements out of my ass. I didn't really measure the dried fruit I just dumped them out of the containers I had them in. But for those who love to be exact I guestimated those measurements just for you.

My sourdough starter off to the left, kombucha scoby experiment in the back &  my big bucket of granola front and center.

That's it. Now I will say that this recipe is not as sweet as the store bought kind or many other recipes that call for 2 cups of sugar. (WTF right?) I just like a little bit of sweet in the morning and this recipe mostly gets that from the dried fruits.

Store in a tupperware or something to keep the bugs out. I recycled an old ice cream bucket which is called the granola bucket of yum in my house. Your kids will shove their grubby little hands into this often so maybe keep it in a communal place for easy clean up.

Bucket of yum

Enjoy!
xo-Thea