Granola

Original recipe has been sufficiently modified that we’re providing our recipe below in full. Our current iteration of the recipe is as follows:

  • 8 cups rolled oats
  • 1 cups wheat germ
  • 1 cups oat bran
  • 1 cup ground flax meal
  • 1 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1 cup sesame seeds
  • 1 cup finely chopped almonds
  • 1 cup finely chopped pecans
  • 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 3/4 cup brown rice syrup
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (you can do 4 tbsp=1/4 cup if you want your granola to taste deliciously cinnamony)
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
  2. Line two large cookie sheets with aluminum foil (parchment paper works too)
  3. Combine the oats, wheat germ, oat bran, sunflower seeds, almonds, pecans, and walnuts in a (very) large bowl
  4. Stir together the salt, brown sugar, jam, oil, cinnamon, and vanilla in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, and break up the clusters of jam using a wooden spoon until reasonably smooth
  5. Pour wet ingredient mixture over the dry ingredients, and stir to coat. Spread the mixture out evenly on the baking sheets.
  6. Bake in the preheated oven until crispy and toasted, about 40-50 minutes. Allow at least 30 minutes to cool if you like your granola clumpy, then store in an airtight container (gallon plastic bags work well). At 300 degrees F it’s pretty hard to burn – Tim left it for like 70 minutes once and you couldn’t tell (but 2 hours definitely burned it).

Your kitchen will smell delicious after you take it out. Makes enough for the two of us for about 2 weeks; Tim generally eats about twice as much per meal as Alya, though, so your mileage may vary :).

We currently eat our granola with kefir and fresh berries of any type. Our current preferred choice is a mixture of 50% Lifeway plain kefir and 50% Trader Joe’s strawberry kefir – but it’s tasty with either type of kefir individually, milk, greek yogurt, or dry as a snack.

  • 8 cups rolled oats
  • 1 cups wheat germ
  • 1 cups oat bran
  • 1 cup ground flax meal
  • 1 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1 cup sesame seeds
  • 1 cup finely chopped almonds
  • 1 cup finely chopped pecans
  • 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup jam (we’ve tried various berry jams, strawberry is our favourite)
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (you can do 4 tbsp=1/4 cup if you want your granola to taste deliciously cinnamony)
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups dried fruit (dried cherries, cranberries, raisins, chopped dried apricots, etc. all work well. Our favourite is dried cherries)
  1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
  2. Line two large cookie sheets with aluminum foil (parchment paper works too)
  3. Combine the oats, wheat germ, oat bran, sunflower seeds, almonds, pecans, and walnuts in a (very) large bowl
  4. Stir together the salt, brown sugar, jam, oil, cinnamon, and vanilla in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, and break up the clusters of jam using a wooden spoon until reasonably smooth
  5. Pour wet ingredient mixture over the dry ingredients, and stir to coat. Spread the mixture out evenly on the baking sheets.
  6. Bake in the preheated oven until crispy and toasted, about 40-50 minutes. Allow at least 30 minutes to cool if you like your granola clumpy, then stir in the dried fruit before storing in an airtight container (gallon plastic bags work well). At 300 degrees F it’s pretty hard to burn – Tim left it for like 70 minutes once and you couldn’t tell.

Your kitchen will smell delicious after you take it out. Makes enough for the two of us for about 2 weeks; Tim generally eats about twice as much per meal as Alya, though, so your mileage may vary :).

We currently eat our granola with kefir and fresh berries of any type. Our current preferred choice is a mixture of 50% Lifeway plain kefir and 50% Trader Joe’s strawberry kefir – but it’s tasty with either type of kefir individually, milk, greek yogurt, or dry as a snack.

The rest of this page documents various past iterations. Our third iteration of the recipe, which is Alya’s favorite and Tim also quite liked, had this ingredients list:

  • 8 cups rolled oats
  • 1 cups wheat germ
  • 1 cups oat bran
  • 1 cup flax seeds
  • 1 cup sesame seeds
  • 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1 cup finely chopped almonds
  • 1 cup finely chopped pecans
  • 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup molasses
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 3 egg whites
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups raisins or sweetened dried cranberries => half cranberries, half mix of {golden raisins, dried cherries}

The egg whites are added to the liquid mixture after boiling it – you need to wait for the liquid mixture to cool, however, or the egg whiles will cook when added.

(The egg whites are just a substitute binder to let us use less oil)

We also followed some of the allrecipes comments by lowering the temperature to 300 degrees and cooking for more like 30 minutes in total as a result.

Cooking for a longer period of time without stirring results in more clumpy granola, so keep that in mind if you like clusters.

For our first iteration of the recipe, which is Tim’s favorite breakfast food ever, we did the following changes to the ingredients:

  • 8 cups rolled oats
  • Added 1 cup flax seeds
  • Added 1/6 cup sesame seeds
  • 1 1/2 cups wheat germ => 1 cup
  • 1 1/2 cups oat bran => 1 cup
  • 1 cup sunflower seeds => 1/2 cup
  • 1 cup finely chopped almonds
  • 1 cup finely chopped pecans => no pecans
  • 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar => no brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 3/4 cup honey => 1 cup honey
  • 1 cup vegetable oil => 3/4 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups raisins or sweetened dried cranberries => half mix of {raisins, currants}, half mix of {golden raisins, cranberries}

We also followed some of the allrecipes comments by lowering the temperature to 300 degrees and cooking for more like 30 minutes in total as a result.

This edition was flawed in Alya’s view in that the granola did not clump at all; we suspect this was in part because we cut significantly the liquid mixture (oil and sugar).

Second attempt

Our second experiment differed in that it featured more nuts and seeds, and also a different liquid mixture with some oil replaced by egg whites. We cooked it a bit longer than the original one, which resulted in a few more clusters.

  • 8 cups rolled oats
  • 1 cup flax seeds
  • 1/2 cup sesame seeds
  • 1 cup wheat germ
  • 1 cup oat bran
  • 3/4 cup sunflower seeds
  • 3/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1 cup finely chopped almonds
  • 1 cup finely chopped pecans
  • 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup honey
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 3 egg whites
  • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups raisins or sweetened dried cranberries => half mix of {raisins, currants}, half mix of {golden raisins, cranberries}

The egg whites were mixed into the liquid mixture after the rest of the liquids were boiled and then cooled a bit (so they wouldn’t cook the eggs).

This one has a distinctly pumpkin taste to it.