Homemade granola

You don't have to have a bunch of ingredients to make granola.  Sometimes all we have in ours is oatmeal and raisins (if we even have those), but my kids love it anyway.  We don't eat cold cereal, and this is cheaper than that even though it's more expensive than almost any other breakfast I make.

 

Here's the start of our granola.  It's a double recipe with 12 cups of rolled oats and coconut (we were given some but MIL and I haven't used it all yet) and 2 cups of flour.  The recipe calls for:

• 2 cups of whole wheat flour,
• 6 cups of oatmeal,
• 1 cup coconut,
• 1 cup wheat germ,
• 1 cup of raw sunflower seeds and
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon to start.

Next in a separate bowl, we pour:

•  1 cup of syrup,
• 1 cup of oil,
• 2 teaspoon vanilla,
• 1/2 cup water,
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt. 

Even though it was a double recipe, I didn't double anything but the oatmeal, and cinnamon.  It wasn't very sweet, so I think 1 1/2 cups of syrup would be better, then we aren't adding heaping teaspoons of sugar to our granola.  I can ban sugar from the table if the cereal is sweet enough. 

Put the bowl of liquids into the microwave to heat it up - a couple of minutes.  Stir it in with the dry ingredients. 

Spread on greased cookie sheets.  Bake at 250 for one hour stirring every fifteen minutes.

When cooled, add fruit and nuts.  Some ideas are:

• 1 cup of raisins
• 1 cup of dried apricots
• 1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped

Hope you like it.
Steph