THE Granola to END all Granolas AKA Maple Nut Granola

Halloween is over... candy is on sale.... I may have indulged a bit too much.... How about a healthy(er) recipe today? I love starting my day off with a bowl of granola. I have tried MANY different recipes, all delicious, but the other evening I hit a combination that transformed my granola into an ADDICTING, CANT GET ENOUGH OF IT, ANY time of day snack! I found myself reaching for granola breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and a heck of a lot in between too). I guess that eating it for every meal may cancel out the healthiness, but this granola is so good, I really didn't care. It combines the essential fall flavors of maple and brown sugar with creamy peanut butter. At first, this may seem a strange combination. But let me tell you, it WORKS! I have been eating this granola on fruit, with milk, in yogurt, on my ice cream, but mostly just by the fist full! It is crunchy and clumpy, which for me is an essential for a great granola. Feel free to mix in whatever your heart desires, but I recommend you just try it as is. You may decide, as I did, that this granola is simply perfection!

2 cups rice krispies

2 cups old fashioned oats

1/3 cup peanut butter

1/3 cup maple syrup

4 tablespoons water

1/4 cup brown sugar, packed

3-4 tablespoons honey (depends how sweet you want it)

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, mix together rice crispies and oats.

In a heavy bottom sauce pan, mix together peanut butter, maple syrup, water and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved.

Pour liquid ingredients over oats and krispies, stirring to coat. Empty bowl onto baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Spread granola out into a thick layer. Drizzle with honey and sprinkle with remaining brown sugar. Bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes. Gently flip/stir granola (I use a large rubber spatula and flip it over bit by bit so as not to break up the clumps). Cook for another 6 or 7 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from oven, allow to cool completely. Gently break into bite sized clumps.

*Note: Ok, so looking back at the ingredients I used, I realize that this granola has quite a bit of sweetness. But that's probably a good thing since, thanks to Halloween, my sugar intake has been pretty high. I don't wanna quit the sugar habit cold turkey. So this granola will keep me from going into candy withdrawl :)

Crunch, savor, enjoy.

Creamy Breakfast Quinoa

Healthy, hearty, delicious, filling.... all words that describe my breakfast today! I am the newest member of the quinoa fan club. I have been hearing a lot about this healthy little grain lately and decided to give it a try myself. It was a good choice! It has a wholesome, nutty flavor and is surprisingly fluffy and creamy with a slight crunch. Easy, too, just add milk and sugar and cook for about 15 minutes! I topped off my bowl with a bit of granola, a handful of blueberries, a chopped nectarine and a drizzle of honey. Wholesome goodness in a bowl! Enjoy!

Creamy Breakfast Quinoa

Ingredients

Makes 2 servings

1 cup quinoa

1 1/2 cups water

~1/2 cup milk (I used plain soy)

2-3 tbsp (to taste) brown sugar

Handful of blueberries

Chopped nectarine

1/4 cup granola

Honey

Place quinoa in a colander and rinse until water runs almost clear (DON'T skip this step, it will have a soapy aftertaste if not well rinsed). Put quinoa in a heavy bottomed sauce pan and cover with 1 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium low and simmer, covered for about 15 minutes or until water is absorbed. Remove from heat, let sit covered for 5 minutes, remove cover and fluff with a fork. (This is your basic quinoa, now we start adding!). Add in 1/2 cup milk and brown sugar. Return to heat over medium low, stirring until majority of milk is absorbed (taste at this point to make sure it is sweet enough, if not add more brown sugar or honey). Remove from heat, spoon into bowl. Top with blueberries, nectarine, granola, and honey. Sit back and bask in the glory of a healthy breakfast ☺

Have a wonderful day!

Granola Bars

Hello! Happy Tuesday... My weekend was a little stressful because my grandma is having health problems :( But Jose is here so that helps me de-stress! This morning my parents had to go to the hospital with my grandma and since when I get stressed, I bake, that is what I did. I decided to make a recipe I found on Lynn's Kitchen Adventures blog for homemade granola bars. I figured that if we are going to be spending a lot of time at the hospital, it would be nice to have something healthy and portable on hand to take with us as hospital snack food is not the best! I made the bars exactly like she says in her recipe except I only put in two cups oats and I added in 1/3 cup raw sunflower seeds. I also added dried cranberries and chocolate chips. They turned out pretty yummy and definitely better than any store bought variety! Cheaper too! Sorry about the lack of good pictures but I've been so busy I didn't have time to upload them all. I hope you all have a good week. Keep us in your prayers, especially grammy!

Cranberry Chocolate Granola Bars

Courtesy of Lynn's Kitchen Adventures

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tblsp honey

2 tblsp corn syrup (I used light)

2 cups quick cooking oats

1/3 sunflower seeds

About 1/3 cup cranberries (I didn't actually measure, I just put in a handful)

Sprinkle of chocolate chips (I didn't actually measure these either)

Grease an 8x8 inch pan. In a sauce pan, combine the butter, brown sugar, honey, and corn syrup. Stir constantly over medium heat until butter melts, sugar dissolves, and mixture is smooth. Remove from heat and add oats, cranberries, sunflower seeds, and chocolate chips. Stir well until oats are well coated. Spread mixture into 8x8 pan. Bake for 22 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool 5 minutes and cut into bars (this is a little tricky cause the bar will stick to the knife so clean the knife often). Let cool one hour more in pan and then remove bars from the pan (they won't be completely cooled yet but at this point it is easiest to get them out).

Saturday Market

One of the things I love most about Spring/Summer weekends is the plethora of farmers markets. Lake Oswego has a pretty great one that I usually hit about every other weekend, especially when it's blueberry time! It has a wide variety of produce and other yummy treats and the best part is that they are all produced locally. Fresh really is better. I also enjoy watching all the different types of people and their pets that flood to the markets. Last time I went I snapped a bunch of pictures of all the beautiful flowers, food, and people that I encountered. I like to go to the market early to get the freshest produce, but really any time of the day will yield amazing finds. In addition to the Lake Oswego market, I have been to the Portland Farmers market and the Northeast Portland Farmers market that is held on Sundays. The Northeast market is by far the smallest of the three, but if you live over that way it is worth stopping by, one of the booths has amazing raw honey for sale that works great for granola recipes. The Portland Farmers market is the biggest and has the most variety, but the Lake Oswego market will always have a place in my heart because of my memories of going there with my family. I am hoping to try out the Beaverton market in the next few weekends so I will be sure to give it a thorough review after I finally manage to make it over there!

My FAVORITE snack! Light, cinnamony, Perfect!

From Hoffman Dairy Gardens

This dog was huge, and he was still a puppy!

This booth was new to the market, I sampled their Maple Bacon ice cream, which sounds weird but let me tell you it is soo good! It's a perfect combination of sweet and salty. I am officially hooked!

They don't have a blog... yet... but they are going to be opening a food cart on NE 7th and Burnside. They have a facebook page so look 'em up! I grabbed their flavor descriptions from their page and posted them below. The maple bacon was sublime but their other flavors sound great too, I will definitely be back for more.

Products:Flavors --

Tahitian Vanilla:

We swirl fruity, tropical Tahitian vanilla with a hint of swarthy, smoky Mexican vanilla to create this epic ice cream. This will change the way you think about vanilla.

Maple with Bacon:

Imagine crispy bacon piled high over stacks of maple-drizzled pancakes. Yummy maple ice cream studded with humanely raised, nitrate & hormone free bacon.

Caramelized Apple:

Inside is a pint of award-winning Washington apple cider boiled down into a buttery, bittersweet caramel. The flavor of fresh, tart apples shines brightly.

Stumptown Coffee:

Starring Stumptown's perfectly-balanced organic Latin American and East African coffee. They buy the beans directly from the farmers so everyone gets their fair share.

Slabtown Whiskey:

Just down the street from our kitchen is House Spirits Distillery, Portland's finest purveyors of small-batch libations. Whiskey's fire is quenched by cream & sugar.

Coconut-Lemon-Saffron Sorbet:

An alluring blend of creamy coconut milk and lemon, infused with saffron, cardamom, and star anise. This sorbet is an intoxicating journey down the silk road. A dairy-free delight. (Vegan)

Seriously... hunt them down and try it!

YUM!
Flowers from Vang's Gardens.

Best butter horns around!

Irresistible....


Baked goods from Blue Ribbon Bakery.

Beat the Blues Granola

This weekend my friend Ronda's dad was put in the hospital, she had also had quite a stressful week. So I thought, what makes me feel better when I'm sad? Delicious baked goods! I wanted to do something healthy as she has been working on eating healthy. So I decided to whip up a batch of homemade granola. The perfect way to start the day off and one of my all time favorite foods! I headed off to Winco to get ingredients. While there I snapped this photo... I just couldn't resist... I mean a WHOLE chicken in a can!?!?

Anywho, back to the granola making... The great thing about this granola is that you can customize it according to what sounds good to you. I was perusing the dried fruits and decided to do cranberries, apples, coconut and raisins. However, once I got back home I decided it would be better to leave out the coconut and raisins, add in some almonds, a splash of vanilla and a few tablespoons of peanut butter. I was going to call it Vanilla, Apple, Almond, Cranberry Granola, but that is way to long so I settled on "Beat the Blues Granola" and it is gooood, like really really good! And easy, so easy that I will never buy store bought granola again! I think it would also be great with dried apricots and maybe pecans? The possibilities are really endless! I also decided not to slice the almonds but rather I chopped them in large chunks and it turned out to be a great addition to the texture of the granola. To finish it off I put it in pretty jars, tied it up with a ribbon, and voila! A yummy, healthy gift! And it freezes well so if you make a big batch you can put it in a tupperware or ziplock bag to pull out as needed. The recipe below is based on a great granola recipe from everybodylikessandwiches.com. Feel free to customize it however and let me know if you hit upon a particularly genius combination! The amounts of ingredients are an estimate because I just kind of threw it together.

Happy Baking!

Liz

Beat the Blues Granola

adapted from everybodylikessandwiches.com

4½ Cups Oats

1¼ Cup Chopped Almonds

3 Tbsp. Brown Sugar

Pinch of Salt

Pinch of Cinnamon

1 Tbsp. White Sugar

⅓ Cup Vegetable Oil

⅓ Cup Honey

2-3 Tbsp. Peanut Butter (more peanut butter = more peanut butter flavor)

5 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

2 Cups Dried Cranberries

1 Cup Diced Dried Apples

Preheat oven to 300℉. Mix oats, almonds, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon.

In a saucepan over medium heat, add oil, honey, and sugar. Stir until the mixture just begins to bubble. Remove from heat and stir in peanut butter and vanilla.

Once the PB melts, pour the mixture over the oats and stir well until mixed.

Spread the granola out on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Bake for about ten minutes, then use a spatula to flip it over. Cook for another five minutes, take out and stir/flip again add in apples and cranberries and cook until lightly golden brown (this doesn't take too long so watch it closely!).

Remove from oven, allow to cool completely and enjoy!

The Great Granola Experiment

Happy Weekend!! This past weekend, I made granola LOTS of granola! . A while ago I posted about my "Beat the Blues" Granola, and while that granola is delicious, I felt like it was lacking a certain something. Upon further thought, I realized what I wanted was a really, really, clumpy granola. The kind you can buy at the bakery that is broken up into chunks and sooo good to munch as a snack, even without milk or yogurt. I have always had a love of clumps in my cereal. When eating Honey Bunches of Oats, I pick through and eat just the bunches. Raisin Bran Crunch? I search out the crunchies. So, I thought to myself, why not make a granola that is mostly clumps with some small oats thrown in there?

Well, I was at Whole Foods a few days ago browsing the bulk section for dried fruits, when I saw that they have a HUGE selection of bulk granola! And on every bin the ingredients are listed. I was able to look at all different types of granola and asses their relative "clumpiness." What I was looking for is a ratio of about 2/3 clumps to 1/3 "loose" (single pieces of oats, nuts, the non-clumps basically). I was immediatley drawn to the beautiful clumpiness of one of these called Aunt Maple's Crunchy Granola (made by grizzlies granola). I studied the ingredients in hopes of discovering what gives it its special clumpy powers. I noticed that the ingredients included maple syrup, sunflower oil, honey, and crunchy almond butter. Basically a grande mix of sticky stuff. Ah ha! I thought that must be it! LOTS of sticky goo to hold it together. So from there I went about my sticky quest buying up every substance I thought might work as a good "binder". I got maple syrup, sunflower oil, honey, and crunchy peanut butter (I think it has more flavor). I arrived home with my loot and commenced the search for a crunchy lumpy recipe. I found TONS of blogs with posts dedicated to recipe's claiming to produce the clumpiest granola imaginable. How to choose??? I continued my research by looking at ingredient lists for every crunchy looking granola I could find, and let me say, I spent a LOT of time browsing the granola selections at Whole Foods, trader joes, New Seasons, and even at good old Winco which has a pretty clumptastic granola they sell in their bakery. I finally decided to try two blog recipe's which use ingredients that commonly pop up on the crunchiest looking granola labels, and for the third batch I decided to use a combination of all the sticky stuff I had bought and just wing it. Thus, the great granola experiment commenced. My plan was to make all three recipes and decide from the results which reigns supreme as the Most Clumptastic Granola. I did tweak the first two recipe's a bit, and I halved them as I was making THREE batches of granola, so I included the links in case you would like to try out the original recipe's for yourself.

Recipe #1

This recipe comes courtesy of Regina Ray's blog. I chose this recipe due to #1 it's simplicity, #2 the use of peanut butter, honey, and olive oil as "binders" (olive oil seemed unusual, which intrigued me...) and reason #3 She seems to share my desire for a good clumpy granola.

Here is the recipe as I used it:

Batch One

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats

3/4 cup mixed nuts, lightly salted.

The original recipe doesn't specify type of nut, so I used dry roasted sunflower seeds (for the salty part), raw flax seeds, and raw coarsly chopped almonds

1/4 cup honey

3 heaping tablespoons crunchy peanut butter

1 tbsp olive oil

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Chop lightly salted nuts into chunks (I would recommend just chopping the almonds while leaving the smaller seeds whole.) On stove, melt peanut butter, honey, and olive oil (little hint, measure out olive oil first and the peanut butter won't stick to the tablespoon). Stir until mixture is thinned and liquidy.

Pour on top of oats and nuts and mix thoroughly to coat.

Layer on baking sheet and bake 10-14 minutes until granola is golden brown. Let cool completely, break into pieces and store in an air-tight container.

Assesment

This was pretty clumpy! The ratio was about 2/3 clumps to 1/3 non clumps (oat and nut pieces not bound together) The clumps break up pretty easily and it is a very crisp granola. As you can see, the recipe does not call for any fruit. I like this because I have found that with drier granolas, baking them with dried fruit produces SUPER dried out fruit that is chewy and lacks flavor. All in all, this is a great, basic, clumpy granola. I like the simplicity of it's ingredients and think that this is one I will use as a "base" recipe. I plan on making it again using a splash of vanilla, almond butter, and adding in dried strawberries after baking.

Recipe #2

This is from a blog called Cake and Commerce. I chose this one because of it's unusual baking technique and because the auther commented that she had tried out 5 different recipes to find a good clump, and this was her winner. The recipe is vague regarding exact amounts and ingredients to use as the author wants to keep her version a secret (which I completely understand!).

Here is her original ingredient list:

Dry Ingredients:

5 parts rolled oats (do not use instant)

1 part seed(s) of your choice (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower etc)

1 part coconut, shredded unsweetened

2 parts nuts of your choice

Pinch of salt

.1 part sweet spice (cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, cardamom etc)

Wet Ingredients

2 parts natural invert sugar (maple, honey, agave etc in combination or alone)

1.5 parts sunflower oil (less if you want to omit fat. Can substitute coconut oil)

1.5 parts water (ONLY if you want clumpy granola)

.5 parts (or less) Vanilla (or other flavoring such as almond, liqueur, juice etc)

Fruit

5 parts (equal to oat by weight) dried fruit of your choosing (including raisins, if desired. If you like a less fruity granola, reduce by half)

Due to the inspecifity of this list, I was free to use the ingredients I thought would produce the tastiest, biggest clumps. Please forgive my measurements as it was a bit difficult to come up with ratios since I was halving the recipe and I am overly perfectionistic. It actually took me a good ten minutes to sit down and figure out, mathematically, how to halve the recipe. I based my measurements on a recipe where 5 parts rolled oats is = to 2 cups rolled oats (I am no math wiz, but I am borderline OCD so I figured it out down to the nearest tablespoon). I figured if I was gonna conduct a scientific experiment, I better be EXACT. In retrospect, I think it would have been just as succesful if I had estimated.

My calculations.... did I mention the OCD? ya....

My Version

(seriously, dont be scared, you really dont have to be this exact, I'm sure you could just round, like I said, I am a suuuper perfectionist, it's annoying)

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats (dont used instant)

6 1/2 tbsp sunflower and flax seed mixture

6 1/2 tbsp shredded, unsweetened coconut

3/4 cup + 1tbsp almonds (roughly chopped)

pinch salt (you cant calculate a pinch)

1/2 tbsp cinnamon

3/4 cup + 1 tbsp combination of maple syrup and honey

9 1/2 tbsp sunflower oil

9 1/2 tbsp water

2 tbsp Vanilla

1 cup raisins and dried cranberries

Procedure

Preheat oven to 275 F.

Combine dry ingredients.

Warm wet ingredients on stove, stir until liquidy. Add to dry ingredients, stir until mixed.

The next part seemed a little wierd to me but it worked out well.Spread granola out on baking sheet lined with parchment. Place another piece of parchment on top, apply pressure with your hands to granola to press down. Place another baking sheet on top, press down, place heavy casserole pan on top of that and put it in the oven for 15 minutes. Luckily the original author showed a picture of this process. So, I will to :)

After 15 minutes, remove top piece of parchment and baking pan. Allow to bake until golden, about 40-50 minutes (mine got a little over golden as I got sucked into a particularly intense Iron Chef episode). Remove from oven and allow to cool. Break up and store in an airtight container.

This recipe turned out really flavorful. It had a good clumps to loose ratio as well. It was much more labor intensive (due mostly to my extreme calculations) and I let it cook too long so it was a bit burned on the edges and darker than I would've liked. The recipe is much wetter than the previous one which increases the cooking time quite a bit. At the end it was definitely more flavorful, but also less crunchy (due to the larger amount of liquid ingredients used).It had a chewier clump than the previous recipe. I am going to have to make this one again without burning it to give it a fair assesment. But, I would say granola one has the slight edge so far.

*I was originally skeptical about this recipe's addition of the dried fruit before cooking as I thought it would come out over dried. However, the extra liquidiness was absorbed and the raisins and cranberries plumped up beautifully. Lesson learned!

Recipe #3

Ok so the third recipe I came up with.For the third recipe, I decided to use a combination of the elements that were particullary succesful from the previous two recipes and utilize all the sticky stuff possible. Once I decided on the ingredients, I crossed my fingers and started mixing. I used molasses as the main binder in this recipe as I really like the flavor it imparts. When I pulled the granola out of the oven, I was ecstatic! It had perfectly clumpy clumps and smelled AMAZING. I couldn't wait to try it and see if the flavor was everything I was hoping it would be. To get it to cool off faster, I decided to stick the tray out on my portch as it was pretty cool outside. Right as I was going out the door, disaster struck!

I tripped and the pan flipped out of my hands and ALL over my portch. NOOOO, my granola!!!! It was now all over the portch and crumbling down theough the cracks onto my neighbors portch! I almost cried! What was I to do? It was 11:00 at night and I wanted my granola!! There was no help for it, I had to start all over again. So after a brief period of mourning/cleaning/introducing myself to my neighbor and apologizing, I tried again. This time it again came out beautifully and I am THRILLED with my new recipe. Here it is:

Winning Granola Combo

Ingredients

2 1/3 cups old fashioned oats

2/3 cup steel cut oats

3/4 cup coarsely copped almonds

3/4 cup flax seeds and sunflower seeds

Pinch of salt1/2 cup brown sugar

3 tbsp molasses (I used mild flavor)

2 1/2 tbsp honey

2 tbsp maple syrup

3 heaping tbsp peanut butter

2 tbsp water

1/2 tbsp oil

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 325.

Mix together wet ingredients.

Over medium heat, melt liquid ingredients until runny.

Pour over dry ingredients, mixing well.

Spread granola out on parchment lined baking sheet. Cook in oven for 20 minutes. After about 20 minutes, or when the granola turns light golden brown, turn oven off, open the oven door a bit to vent and allow granola to cool for another 20 minutes. If it looks like it is getting too brown, pull it out and let it continue to dry completely.

When completely cooled. Gently break into clumps (you pick the size!) and store in an airtight container.

This recipe has both of my favorite elements from the previous two recipes (the crispy clumps of the first recipe and a yummy flavor similar to the second recipe). I liked the flavor for this recipe better than either of the previous two, it is peanutty and sweet with a great hint of carmally molasses and brown sugar with maple undertones. The clump ratio is at a perfect balance of 1/3 loose to 2/3 clumps. I hope you enjoy it as much as I am, and happy baking!