Cooking with Rae and Helen: Sunday Morning Granola

First of all, it’s been forever since I’ve posted on the blog! Despite my extended absence from Yellow Brick Oven, I’ve been cooking nonstop at home! Lately, I’ve been baking fresh batches of granola for my parents every Sunday. Usually, this recipe will last throughout the week! However, the first time I made this recipe it was gone by the next day. This recipe is super adaptable–each week we’ve been adding different dried fruits and nuts to switch it up. But here is the original recipe so you can enjoy it too on lazy weekend mornings.

Ingredients:

4 cups quick oats

1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sweetened, shredded coconut

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup dried cherries

Directions:

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

After getting together your ingredients, incorporate the oats, almonds, coconut, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Stir ingredients together. Heat up olive oil and honey in the microwave in a glass liquid measuring cup for about 20 seconds until warm. This will ensure that the honey will pour easily into the oat mixture. Add in vanilla into liquid measuring cup, whisk the mixture a bit, and drizzle over the oat mixture. Start to fold the oat mixture to make sure that everything is coated!

Spread granola mixture on a large baking sheet. Place in oven. The entire cooking process will take about 30-45 minutes. However, you’ll want to remove the cooking sheet several times to toss the granola to make sure everything is evenly toasted.

After granola is baked till perfectly golden brown, take the cooking sheet out of the oven. I like to add the dried fruit to the mixture after the baking process because I find no reason to dry it even more. So, add your cup of dried tart cherries and toss the mixture one last time! Let the granola come to room temperature and then serve with cold, delicious milk or greek yogurt. Garnish with berries, a drizzle of honey, or a dash of maple syrup! Enjoy!

If you’d like to change the recipe a bit, here are some more ingredients that we’ve tried:

1/3 cup pistachios

1/2 cup dried blueberries (again, add at end of baking process)

1/2 cup cashews, halved

1/2 cup chopped dried apricots

The best thing about granola is that you can add to it anything you’d like! Or anything thats left over in your pantry.

-Helen