Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Suzie's Granola

You can say I am lucky lately. Blessed again by friends who love to bake!

This week I was particularly lucky to get a container of this lovely homemade granola from Suzie.

It was still warm when I received it and it had a lovely soft and chewy texture spiked with jewels of dried fruit and crunchy nuts. It is so good that I have been rationing it. I have just a few spoons of it swirled into my morning (and sometimes afternoon!) yogurt.

I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. I think the kids would enjoy making this- personalizing it to their unique flavours of dried fruit would be fun.

Go ahead and make the full batch- you will love it and then you can share the love...thanks Suzie!

Suzie's Homemade Granola
Suzie suggests these measurements are approximate- add more or less of what you want. She also makes a version of this with cranberries, strawberries and blueberries...use what dried fruit you can get your hands on. Make a half recipe if you must.

8-9 cups whole oats
2 cups sunflower seeds
1 cup wheat germ
1 cup wheat bran
1 cup oat bran
1 cup sesame seeds
2 cups almonds or nuts of choice
2-3 cups raisins
3 cups chopped dried fruit (she says to use whatever you want- the one I received had dried mango and cherries, dried apple, dates, dried apricots)
2 cups honey
3/4-1 cup oil

1. Have a large bowl and mix all the above ingredients together well.
2. Heat honey and oil in a saucepan. Boil until foaming and then pour onto dry mix and mix well.
3. Spread out onto 3 large cookie sheets that are greased. She bakes it at 325 degrees in a convection oven (regular oven should be about 350 degrees). At 7 minutes in, she takes them out and stirs it around and then puts them back in the oven on a different level (top to bottom, etc.) Bake 7 more minutes (or slightly more with a regular oven- you may want to do 10 minutes each time for a regular oven) until desired "doneness".
4. Take pans out of oven, let cool on pan. Break apart and store in sealed container. (Suzie suggests baking it longer if you want it crunchy...I really, really enjoyed the chewy consistency, so I recommend that!)