Granola Homemade

Here's a recipe from my old blog when we used to live on a homestead. 

When I decided to learn how to make our food from scratch, granola went on the list right away!  It's a wonderful, wholesome food for any time of the day.  Our favorite time for granola is a night-time snack either with yogurt or a dash of milk and it also makes an awesome gift for someone who appreciates good food.


Here's the recipe:

Mix it up and put it in the oven..

Beware to keep a close eye on this granola while it cooks, depending on your oven you might want to start out by lowering the temp to 250 and check it often.  Start with that as a baseline and go from there.  You're just looking for it to crisp up and be careful because it can darken and burn very quickly if you forget.  Ask me how I know:-)  It might take roughly 45 minutes or an hour?  I guess I've never timed it as I always have numerous other projects going on at the same time.

If you don't have some of the ingredients or don't like some then just substitute the same amount of something else for what you like.  As for the flax seeds, I just toss in a handful.  The nuts I use are some chopped almonds and sunflower seeds. Pecans and walnuts work great but I'd rather save them for other baking projects and use my cheaper nuts for this. 

Yes...there is a lot of controversy about the evils of sugar regardless of what form it comes in, white, raw, honey, agave etc.  My motto is that what I make at home is much better for me than what I could purchase at the store (and more economical) so if it contains sugar; as with all things...moderation is the key.  If you don't like to use sugar then by all means there are a lot of recipes on the net that show you how to use honey, agave etc in granola and I'm sure they are good as well.

Make sure you add your fruits AFTER you take it out from the oven otherwise you could have little rocks.  

For my own convenience, I put the recipe right on the jar so I have no excuse when it starts to run low, to get another batch going.

This recipe isn't one of the cheapest ones because it uses real butter and a lot of coconut but we appreciate the health benefits of the fat in butter and coconut so that is why we choose to use this one.  There are many recipes on the web that show you how to use other fats if you choose to do so.  Some of them even use regular vegetable oils for those whose budget doesn't allow for more expensive fats/oils.  Don't despair, if that is what you can afford then you are still doing your family a good service by providing real foods in this cereal as opposed to many that are processed.