My daughter loves granola and eats it with fruit and yogurt every morning. A couple of weeks ago my husband suggested I try making it. He thought I would enjoy the challenge and the savings! However the bonus for me was knowing exactly what went into something my family eats every day. I love to play around with recipes so I found one I liked and got started. Whenever I adjust recipes I usually only change one thing at a time. So for the first run on this recipe I substituted the vegetable oil with coconut oil. I have completely eliminated vegetable oil from our diet so it was an obvious choice. This is the adapted recipe after one try, my changes in red:
Granola
Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown
Ingredients:
- 3 cups rolled oats
- 1 cup slivered almonds
- 1 cup cashews
- 3/4 cup shredded sweet coconut
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
- 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil -- substituted with 1/4 cup coconut oil
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup raisins
Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. In a large bowl, combine the oats, nuts, coconut, and brown sugar. In a separate bowl, combine maple syrup, oil and salt. Combine both mixtures and pour onto 2 sheet pans. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even color. -- baked for an extra 20 minutes to ahcieve a deeper color & crunch
Remove from oven and transfer into a large bowl. Add raisins and mix until evenly distributed.
We really liked it but found it a bit sweet so here are some planned changes for future batches:
- switch out the maple syrup with agave nectar. This link talks about using agave nectar in recipes.
- decrease the brown sugar
- substitute shredded coconut with unsweetened variety
What I just described is the process I use to adapt a recipe to our tastes. I believe in feeding my family as well as possible and one way I achieve this is by making the things we like as healthy as possible without compromising the flavor.
Thank you for stopping by! I hope you'll try this recipe, let me know what you think!
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6 comments:
Yum! This sounds like a delicious breakfast if you throw in some yogurt!
I love granola and this looks terrific! :-)
I love to add cranberries to our granola.
So glad that you shared this at Things I've Done Thursday!!
Melanie
www.bearrabbitbear.com
P.S. I launched a great CD giveaway today if you're interested!! http://www.bearrabbitbear.com/2012/03/ummcan-i-get-zumba-dvd-to-this-review.html :)
We make something similar, but I use equal parts coconut oil, brown sugar and honey. Yummmmmm
This sounds delicious! Like you, I love knowing exactly what goes in to my kids' bodies. I can't wait to try this one!
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