Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Granola Formula

I have been making granola for almost 6 years now. When I made granola for the first time, I used a recipe from some web site. Then I started altering the ingredients to suit my taste. Every time I made it, the taste was different yet very nice if I may say so. Reason being, you cannot really go wrong with granola. It is oats, dried fruits, nuts, sweetener and oil and optional flavorings. Mix and spread on a cookie sheet and bake for an hour or so at low temperature. It is so easy to make it at home that I wonder why it costs so much when bought from a store.
When I started posting the recipes of 'baking mix', there was a request for a granola recipe that can be tailored to suit different taste buds. Here it is.
As I said earlier, it has the following components -

Oats - I prefer old fashioned rolled oats, but quick cooking oats work too.
Nuts and seeds - cashews, almonds, pecans, walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, Shredded coconut etc.
Dried fruits - Chopped dates, chopped apricots, raisins, dried cranberries, dried figs, etc.
Oil - Prefer canola oil.
Sweetener - Honey, Maple Syrup, Agave nectar, Corn syrup (Has to be liquid See Notes)
Flavorings - cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, vanilla or any spice of your choice

Formula for Granola - 
Oats - 4 cups
Nuts - 3 cups (If using seeds, include that in this)
Sweetener - 2/3 cups
Oil - 1/3 cups
Dried Fruits - 1  - 1 1/2 cups
Flavorings - 1 - 2 tsp (optional)


Method:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a large baking sheet with rim with aluminum foil. Mix oats, nuts in a bowl. Mix the sweetener of your choice with oil and flavorings in another and stir them together. Spread on the baking sheet so that it lays in one layer. Couple of small clusters are fine. Bake for 1 hour stirring every 15 minutes. When completely done and is at room temperature, add the dried fruits and mix well. When completely cool, store in an air tight container for a week or two.

Now, there could be people who want to eat granola but are allergic to nuts. Then all you have to do is increase the oats and omit nuts. Do not do that for dried fruits. You can omit it, but don't try to increase the oats. Basically, whatever you are mixing and baking should have the ratio of 7 parts dry ingredients to 1 part liquid (oil + sweetener). If you are working on low sugar formula, by all means use only 1/4 cup sweetener, but add enough fruit juice or apple sauce to get one cup including oil so that you can mix the ingredients properly and bake. Remember that when you use fruit juice or applesauce, granola will be chewy rather than crunchy.

Notes:
The reason you cannot use sugar or brown sugar is because of not being able to mix and coat the dry ingredients with sugar. You can always make a syrup from the sugar and use it. I have not tried it so cannot say how it will work. I however, have tried mixing part liquid sweetener with part brown sugar and that method works too. If you are using the dry sweetener as part of the recipe, warm up the oil, liquid sweetener and sugar or brown sugar together to dissolve all the sugar and then mix with the dry ingredients.

Enjoy.
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14 comments:

  1. Home made granola were introduced only few months ago to me. otherwise I know only store bought one. The recipe looks simple and I think I can also try.

    Cheers,
    Uma

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  2. i did never try this before... this s yummy...

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  3. Nothing better than homemade stuff .....This recipe sounds V good.....Bookmarked.

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  4. Home-made stuff beats the store ones in so many ways - taste, health and flavor preferences not to mention the cost effectiveness.

    I recently made granola using the method of boiling sugar with the other liquids and it worked really well. Thanks for the proportions Champa, hope to experiment more using these guidelines. Your are doing a tremendous job, please keep at it!

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  5. I have been meaning to make this Champa..looks great..

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  6. Wow nice post...I can have this even daily...looks so delicious

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  7. I must say, this Granola looks scrumpscious! Do you also have a recipe for Muesli? It is becoming more difficult to find it in the specialty stores anymore. Thanks, love your Blog : )

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  8. I also have started making granola at home as its healthier and cheap. tried making healthy granola bars also but somehow it dint bind well.

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  9. Nice post,healthy and delicious breakfast

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  10. Informative post, Champa! Previous times i made, i had added some brown sugar as is before baking, and i felt it kinda melted while baking and gor mixed. This time, i totally omitted it, and it turned out a little too bland :(. Now i guess this method of mixing sugar with oil and honey and adding should work better... Thanks for such useful posts...

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  11. Great post..! very informative..it is very expensive in India as you would be aware of that..!! Thanks a ton..for this:)

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  12. Your "baking mix" series is simply great. You make baking so simple. Got to try this soon...

    by the way, how can i make bars? adding dried fruits before baking, or entirely different mix?

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  13. Nisha,
    Thanks for the comment. Granola bars are basically oats, nuts dried fruits mixed with wet ingredients and then baked. Proportions vary a bit since it needs more liquid to hold them together. I will see if I can come up with a formula for that too. I have granola bar posted. You could use that as a starting point.

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  14. Hi Champa,

    I am making second batch of Granola today. I love this formula. I am trying with portion of black strap molasses along with maple syrup + chia gel. Where are you? I dont see you blogging now a days, guessing it must be busy for you now-a-days. Take care

    Raji.

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If you have a question and you leave it as a comment, I'll surely answer the question to the best of my knowledge. Thanks for visiting.