Picture this, a hot night in July, a fresh batch of homemade granola with toasted almonds, shredded coconut and a hint of maple syrup. Now, decide how you will eat it, should you opt for the traditional granola on plain greek yogurt or substitute it for a scoop of vanilla ice cream? Right, so I’m not the only one out there to go for the dessert option.
A new experiment for me this evening was making homemade granola and I was surprised at being able to pickup all the ingredients (save for maple syrup and honey which I already had) at Bulk Barn for only $8 and have a lot of ingredients left over. There are tons of recipes out there for granola and as many of my recipes go, just put in whatever things you like. It also might look like it has sprinkles in it but that was just my husband’s idea to “make it fun” and purchase rainbow coconut. I also used coconut oil for the first time and was surprised at how easily it melts into a liquid when you mix everything by hand. Here is how I made mine:
- 2 C of 100% whole rolled oats
- 1/2 C of shredded almonds
- 1/4 C of shredded coconut (unsweetened if possible), or rainbow-colored
- 1/4 C of dried apricots
- 2 1/2 Tbsp of Maple Syrup
- 1 1/2 Tbsp of Coconut Oil (or regular canola oil would be fine, not Olive Oil)
- 1 Tbsp of Honey
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees
- Mix everything together *except apricots.
- Pour the mix onto a baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes, watching carefully and only cooking until the mixture begins to lightly brown.
- Cool on the pan until no longer warm and store in an airtight container. The shelf life of granola is around 2 to 3 weeks.
***You can put the apricots in before baking but I found they got mushy and took a while to re-harden before I wanted to put the granola in a container so next time I would mix it in afterwards.
***Some other ingredients you could use: Raisins, Crasins, chopped cashews, seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, etc), dried fruits chopped small.
Even ABrat Can Make It 