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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