Homemade Granola

I love homemade granola!! The best part about it is that you can make it with pretty much any ingredients you want to. It's one of those foods you can personalize to your tastes, and based on what you have on hand.

After my trip up to Country View, I assembled some dry ingredients. For every 10 cups of dry ingredients, you will need 1 cup (approx.) of wet ingredients, including some oil. I use a mild vegetable oil or coconut oil.

For dry ingredients, you can use oats, rolled wheat, rolled barley, some wheat flour, coconut, nuts, nut meal, and so forth, as you see here. I've also made it with just oats, though we definitely like coconut in it. Don't add any dried fruits until it is done roasting, and has cooled.



Mix those together well in a large bowl:



Pour on your wet ingredients (in my case, that included molasses, oil, and honey), then put a thin (1" or so) layer in a lightly greased pan.



Roast your granola until it is dry-ish in a low oven (about 250F). Because it will be hot, it may still feel moist, but it should be toasty brown, and feel drier than it was when you put it in. :-). Stir it every few minutes, to keep from burning. Towards the end, it helps to prop open the oven door to let moisture escape.



If you do burn some as I just did (oops), just pick out the burned parts. Unless it was completely scorched, it should be fine.

Once your granola has cooled off completely, put it into a container for storage, and mix your dried fruits into it then. :-) I use large bakery buckets like this one, and for short term storage, I have a smaller screw-top lid container which I refill as needed.


You can then stir in any dried fruits, like these bananas!