Breakfast, Brunch, Nuts, Pecans, Snack

Favorite granola with puffed grains, pecans, maple syrup, and honey, revised

Favorite granola with puffed grains, pecans, maple syrup, and honey on alickofsalt.com

Granola is a staple breakfast at our house and a frequent ice cream topping. This puffed grain granola is my most requested recipe and the recipe I’ve most gifted or made for others. I’ve once again made a few changes since I last posted it on the site. I always make the recipes I post at least twice before I post them, using the second time as a recipe test of sorts. Somehow the moment I post it signals the time for another change because the recipe I end up making time and time again is almost always a slightly revised version of the one I post. This is the latest version of my favorite granola.

My favorite granola started out as crunchy clusters with almond slices, a recipe adapted from Deb Perelman‘s Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. I then added puffed grains and other ingredients from Kashi’s GoLean Honey Almond Flax Crunch cereal. I then replaced the almond slices with pecans and the puffed wheat with kamut and started baking it in porcelain dishes to give me more room to stir the ingredients while the granola was baking. In this latest version, I added puffed millet and took out the flax seeds.

One hack I’ve learned is to “grease” the tablespoon before measuring out the honey. I measure out the first tablespoon of butter or oil, then measure out the honey so it slides right out, then repeat. Of course, you’d need to be able to pour the honey into the tablespoon to be able to measure it out in this way. I wouldn’t want you to contaminate your honey with a dirty tablespoon if you’re planning on scooping the honey out of a jar.

To best beat the heat, I double the recipe and I make it either in the early morning, before my apartment turns into an oven all on its own, or in the evening. That way, I only have to suffer once in the added oven heat for two batches of granola. Still seems to run out quicker than I would hope.

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Breakfast, Snack

Favorite granola with puffed grains, pecans, maple syrup, and honey

Favorite granola with puffed grains, pecans, maple syrup, and honey on alickofsalt.com

It’s been a while but here I am again with a recipe for my newly favorite granola. I haven’t strayed too, too far from my previously posted puffed grain granola recipe. The main puffed grain I use now is kamut, which is a bigger grain than wheat and is still a good size after it shrinks, and my nuts of choice are now pecans. I often add wheat germ for added protein and nutritional value.

I always forget how quick and easy it is to make granola, and I never make it as often as I should, in part because as soon as I make it, the granola monster, otherwise known as my husband, devours it by the handfuls as a snack. When I do have it, it’s my favorite quick breakfast with yogurt and berries. We also take it along on hikes as an alternative to granola bars, which are typically very sweet. I think that it would also make a nice homemade gift.

My regular grocery store doesn’t carry puffed grains, but I’ve found them at health food stores or grocery stores which have a larger selection of health food — whatever that means — like Whole Foods and Sprouts. If you live in the US, you can use the Arrowhead Mills locator to find stores that carry them. Arrowhead Mills isn’t the only brand that carries puffed grains, but it’s the only one I’ve found in West Los Angeles.

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Breakfast, Snack

Low-sodium crunchy almond granola

If you’ve never made your own granola, you should try it. I bet you’ll never buy granola again. It’s fairly easy to make. I mix all of the ingredients together while the oven is preheating, wash the dishes during the first part of baking, and then relax for the second part. Or write a blog entry. Whichever.

I don’t think that granola needs salt at all but I am very averse to sweet and salty things. I make this recipe or a variation of it regularly, I’ve never added a lick of salt, and I still think that it is way, way better than any granola I’ve bought. But I’m generally been pretty underwhelmed with store-bough granola. The non-crunchy kind gets very soggy, even in yogurt, while the crunchy kind is too crunchy. This has the perfect amount of crunchiness. It won’t get soggy in your yogurt but it also won’t cut up your gums. If you don’t like it crunchy or if you want to make it vegan, skip the egg whites and choose the olive oil over the butter.

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