Homemade Granola
As quickly as we go through Farmer’s Market granola, it seemed only right to find an out-of-this-world recipe that would encourage us to make it ourselves. We may have found the recipe. I’m a bit of a granola connoisseur, so when I saw David Lebovitz touting this one as the Best Granola Recipe, I was intrigued but a little dubious. Friends, if not the best, it’s well up there. My feeling is the secret’s in the homemade apple sauce (or, in our case, two apples blended in a food processor). The toasted sunflower seeds and sliver almonds give it the perfect granola crunch, too.
I find that granola is the easiest thing in the world to make, but the trick comes with having to keep an eye on it while it’s cooking. I stirred this bad boy every ten minutes and it cooked for forty-five.
Like I said, I used David Lebovitz’s recipe, which he adapted from Nigella Lawson, with a few exceptions:
5 cups (450g) multi-grain flakes or old-fashioned rolled oats
3 cups (375g) almonds, coarsely chopped (I used slivered and it worked beautifully)
1 cup (125g) sunflower seeds
3/4 cup (100g) untoasted sesame seeds (I didn’t have any, so I didn’t used ’em and didn’t miss ’em)
1/2 cup (120g) packed light brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon dried ground ginger
1 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 cup (180g) unsweetened applesauce (or another unsweetened fruit puree) ((I blended two apples in the food processor))
1/3 cup (100g) rice syrup (I used about 3/4 of honey and 1/4 of light Karo syrup, only because it was all I had. In future, I’ll probably use a molasses/honey combo or just honey)
1/4 cup (80g) honey (see above)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (I used olive oil)
Grease two large cookie trays. Set aside. Heat oven to 300*F.
Stir the dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
In a small saucepan, warm the applesauce, honey, syrup and oil. Mix the warmed fruit mixture into the dry ingredients. Blend well.
Divide the mixture onto two large cookie trays and spread evenly.
Bake granola for 40-45 minutes, taking the trays out to stir the granola every 10 minutes. Keep an eye on the granola so that it doesn’t burn on the edges.
*When the granola is done it will still taste soft and you may be tempted to cook it for a bit longer. Don’t. It just needs to cool for a couple minutes and then it will take on that familiar crunchy granola texture. Try hard to save some for breakfast the next morning. :)
(Recipe is from David Lebovitz; Instagram pictures are by me.)
For the love of bookshops 