Granola all the time
February 20th, 2006 Caroline
Nigella Lawson’s Feast is my current favorite cookbook, although I’ve only made recipes from two sections: Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame and Breakfast Feast. Because really, despite the broccoli and tofu recipes I’ve been posting, every day I just want to eat breakfast and chocolate cake. Is that so wrong?
I’m going to quote here from Nigella on granola, because she captures my feelings exactly:
You may think making your own breakfast cereal is a strange way to go about life, and certainly I’d never have thought I’d be the kind of person who does this, but the only big deal here is the shopping–the actual making is incredibly easy–and even there, don’t be daunted by the length of the ingrediants list. It means one big sortie to a health food shop [or Trader Joe’s!] and then you’ve got the goods to make this again and again. I love having a big jar of it in the kitchen, to eat with milk for breakfast, over yogurt and drizzled with honey late at night, [with peanut butter and ice cream while watching hard-working Olympic atheletes…], or as it is, by the grasped handful, any time I pass by the jar.
I am eating this granola all the time these days. Today I made Nigella’s granola muffins, which are fine; last week I made these chocolate chip granola cookies, which are also very nice. But I like the granola on its own, whether as breakfast cereal or dessert topping, best, rather than as an ingrediant in something else.
Here is her recipe, which is Andy Rolleri’s recipe, to which I’ve added a few ingrediants myself.
4 1/2 c rolled oats (I use oats half-and-half with TJ’s multigrain hot cereal)
1 c sunflower seeds
3/4 c sesame seeds
1 c raw pumpkin seeds
2 c raw almonds
1/2 c flax seeds
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt
3/4 c applesauce
1/3 c brown rice syrup (I’ve used maple syrup instead, but brown rice syrup gets the granola to clump up better)
1/4 c honey
3/4 brown sugar
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 c raisins (or half raisins, half dried cranberries)
Preheat oven to 300.
Mix together the nuts, seeds, spices and salt. Add the applesauce and mix well, then add the syrups, sugar and vegetable oil and mix again. Spread the mixture out in two large baking pans (I use two pyrex lasagne pans) and bake 45 minutes to an hour, stirring midway through, until it’s all golden and toasty. Remove from the oven, stir in the dried fruit, and let cool.
Entry Filed under: Recipes
7 Comments
1. Libby | February 21st, 2006 at 7:09 am
Well, of course I’m with you on breakfast and chocolate cake. So tell me about the cookies–does the recipe really only make 18? Are they worth it? I’m tempted, as I still have some granola left from my last batch. (I’ve been eating it mixed with oatmeal as a hot cereal–very yummy and a little less sweet.)
2. Caroline | February 21st, 2006 at 7:09 pm
The cookies don’t make that many (we had fewer than 18 because my sous-chef is 4 and likes very big cookies), but that’s ok for us given how much I’m baking these days. On the other hand, the recipe is easily doubled. It’s basically half a tollhouse cookie recipe, I think.
3. www.carolineandtony.com &&hellip | March 25th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
[…] This morning, another pancake project. I had offered a “breakfast feast”– homemade granola, homemade pancake mix, and homemade maple syrup (thanks, Dad!)–for auction at Ben’s preschool last weekend, and it was time to deliver. I’d found a recipe for pancake mix on the web somewhere and mixed it up, then realized maybe I shouldn’t deliver it until I knew it worked. Someone had paid for this, after all. So we scooped out some mix and made a small test batch, and it’s great! The best plain pancakes I’ve ever made! So now I’ll make a batch of mix for ourselves because honestly, despite how lame it may seem to use pancake mix, havingonly one dry ingredient to measure out is going to make pancakes happen more often. And a day that starts with pancakes is a good day. […]
4. www.carolineandtony.com &&hellip | April 2nd, 2006 at 10:12 pm
[…] The first day, with Ben and some of his friends out of school, we made granola and bread. Granola is really just a lot of measuring, and the kids are good at that. Bread is both measuring and playing with dough — cooking and an art project all in one! I had a cookbook open to a particular recipe, but since I was the only one reading it, and with the kids starting to argue about whose turn it was to measure, things got a little casual. Still, it turned out fine. Bread, in my experience, pretty much always does. […]