Homemade Granola

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

Directions
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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Cake Mix Cookies

My daughter started Kindergarten this year :( We have settled into a nice routine that includes some play time when she gets home before it's time to do homework. I usually have a Tupperware full of cut up veggies in the fridge that both kids reach for when they need a snack, but the other day she requested "milk & cookies" as a treat after school. I quickly browsed through a tab in my bookmarks titled "to try" and picked these cake mix cookies.

The recipe couldn't be easier... add two eggs and 1/3 cup of oil to any cake mix and voila, you've got yourself some cookies! Set the oven for 350 and bake for approximately 7-10 minutes depending on how you like your cookies. We pulled ours out at 8 minutes so they would still be a bit 'cakey' in the middle. Add a banana and you've got yourself a great after school snack!

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