I am typing this up because every other granola recipe online is a pack of god damn lies and I want at least one version to be right. Most of them will have you overcrowd your pan so it never gets crunchy, and they don’t bake it nearly long enough. I solved that by splitting this batch between two cookie sheets and it worked perfectly.
The picture up there has dried pineapple and almonds in it, but in the recipe I’ll just refer to “dried fruit” and “nuts.” You can use what you want. However, please be aware that you can’t just mix the dried fruit in directly, because it will burn when you go to bake this stuff. You can either soak the fruit in warm water or alcohol. I use brandy. And then when you strain the brandy out, you have flavored brandy. There’s really no downside to using brandy.
Shut up, I’m not drunk.
For the rest of it, you can use whatever cooking oil you have on hand. I wouldn’t bother wasting olive oil on it, save that shit for things that require it. And I use a combination of honey and maple syrup to sweeten it, but you can use a half cup of one or the other if you prefer. I just had both laying around.
Ingredients
- 3 cups rolled oats, also known as old fashioned oats
- 1 cup dried coconut (optional)
- 1 1/2 cups nuts, chopped or smashed
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 cup dried fruit
- 1/2 cup neutral oil, like vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/4 cup maple syrup
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Brandy (optional, can use warm water instead)
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350. Chop the dried fruit into little pieces, then put it in a container and add either alcohol or warm water to cover, and set aside. Let it sit for at least half an hour so it soaks up some moisture.
Add the oats, coconut, nuts, cinnamon and salt to a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, combine the oil, honey, maple syrup, and vanilla extract. Drain the dried fruit and add it to the liquids and stir to combine, then pour the went ingredients into the dry and mix thoroughly.
Take two rimmed baking sheets and line them with parchment paper, then divide the granola mixture evenly between the two cookie sheets. Spread the granola into as thing and even of a layer as you can get, it probably won’t be perfect, and you probably won’t be able to cover the entire sheet. That is fine! You want to have smaller amounts on each sheet. If you put it all on one sheet, then it’ll never get crunchy at all, as the oats will steam instead of toast. It’ll also take forever to cook.
Once the oven is hot and everything has been spread out as best as you can, pop those cookie sheets in the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Check at 20 minutes to see how it’s coming along. If you see it start to turn dark brown at the edges, that means it’s basically done. At that point, you can leave it in longer to get crunchier if you want. To get a decent amount of crunch in my oven, it took 23 minutes, but I’ll probably let it go longer next time.
Also, I don’t know how much of a difference it makes, but I did bake the granola one baking sheet at a time.
Anyway, that’s it! It’ll be soft when it comes out of the oven but it’ll harden up as it cools. Once it’s nice and solid, break it up and transfer it to a covered container.
I honestly have no idea how long this lasts, I’ve let it sit covered on the counter for a couple weeks and it was still perfectly fine. But it’ll get eaten quick enough that spoilage is not really an issue.
eatbensmeat 