THE best homemade Granola, period

Cereal has been my best friend for the past 6 months or so.  My two year old insists on having breakfast at 5a.m. every SINgle MORNING!!!!  Well, that's particularly hard on a mama with a newborn who hasn't slept all night!  I'm sad to admit that breakfast has sort of gone from a meal for Princes to a meal for paupers as of late.  Cascadian farms organic granola cereal was the healthiest (fairly priced) cereal on the shelf at the grocery store, so needless to say I've paid the CEO's salary with how much I've purchased in recent months.  It's quite a shameful thing when looking at the nutritional facts on the back of the package.  My husband and pickiest nutritional critic, brought it to my attention that there's not much value in a bowl of that cereal :(.  Well, I couldn't let that rest on my conscience, so I went into the laboratory again to create something that I could make in bulk and keep in the freezer.  I'm pretty excited about the results, because it didn't take but twice for me to get it to AWESOME!  The only problem with this granola is that even though I make it in bulk, I cannot keep up with the demand.  The lil' fam fam loves it!

Perfect every time!

Now first, you should know that as long as you have the same amount of dry ingredients and wet ingredients that the recipe calls for, you can exchange almost all of the ingredients for something that you might prefer better.  You may prefer pecans and walnuts instead of seeds, or you may hate coconut shreds, and want to up your portion of quick oats a little.  This recipe is pretty flexible.  I'm posting the recipe as I like best, but you'll see how you can change it up for what you like or what you have on hand.

My dry ingredients

One recipe makes about 28 oz ( the size of a regular box of cereal), but I make 4 at a time.

RECIPE

Dry Ingredients:

4 Cups Quick Oats

1/2 Cup Brown sugar

1/4 Cup ground Chia seeds (or seeds of your choice)

1/4 Cup ground Flaxseed (or seeds of your choice)

1/4 Cup coconut shreds (I used unsweet)

1/4 Cup pumpkin seeds (or seeds or nuts of your choice)

1/4 Cup almond mill (left over pulp from making my almond milk)
1 Tbs. shelled hempseed

1 tsp. sea salt

**1/2  Cup dried fruit to be added AFTER BAKING (optional)

If you don't have any nuts or seeds on hand, feel free to just substitute them with additional quick oats!

Wet Ingredients:

1/3 Cup coconut oil

1/2 Cup warm water

1 tsp. vanilla extract (or your favorite extract flavor)

4 Tbs. (or 1/4 Cup) Raw honey or Agave

Directions:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

Mix wet ingredients in a pyrex oven safe measure cup and sit in oven while preheating to melt your oil (if you don't have one, just use hot water in your mix or heat on stove til melted

Mix all of your dry ingredients well

When oil is melted in wet mix, give it a stir and pour over dry ingredients
mix with a spoon

After thoroughly mixed (nothing is left dry in the bottom of the bowl), continue to mix your ingredients with clean hands, using a squeezing motion to sort of bunch up your ingredients

You don't have to make perfect little balls, I usually just squeeze it into a few hand sized blobs and then sprinkle in little clumps on two non stick cookie sheets (make sure your clumps aren't huge, because you want the granola to cook thoroughly throughout.  Just sprinkle them evenly on your pans, making sure that the bigger clumps are broken up before you bake)

If you don't have non-stick cookie sheets, use parchment paper or silicone baking mats.  Oiled tin foil would probably work too, but the extra oil increases the fat and some may end up sticking

- Bake on 300 for 50 minutes.  Take out half way through and flip with a spatula, so that both sides brown (it won't flip all in one piece, so you just have to shovel it around some)

Cool on stove top for 15 minutes, add optional dried fruit at this time, put in ziplock bag and store in pantry (or refrigerator if you rarely eat cereal).  If you make it in bulk, store the bags you aren't currently using in the freezer.

**This granola cereal is incredible with almond milk.  I used unsweetened that I make myself, but it's also great with Silk almond milk.

Great as a snack, or a yogurt topper