This weekend has been all about baking and making gifts to give to our neighbors and friends. I absolutely love giving something that has been homemade and from the heart. I will be baking something every single day for the next two weeks and giving it away to a random neighbor (we don’t know everyone yet). Two days ago we did sugar cookies, the day after that we made pumpkin bread with applesauce in it, and today was a spiced cranberry, orange, and cashew granola.
The recipe that I use to make my granola is easy. You can kick your feet back and read a book while this bakes. The base ingredients most people have in their pantry and then I like to just add in whatever else I have that sounds good. Most any dried berry or nut will go great in there so feel free to swap out or add in whatever you think sounds tasty. With granola you only need to eat a small amount to get full. 1/3 cup would be a good serving size. This could certainly be made gluten or dairy free with a few adjustments.
Ingredients that I used:
-3 cups quick cooking oats
-2 cups old fashioned oats
-1/2 cup wheat germ (if you have it, this is very optional)
-2 Tbsp orange zest
-1/4 cup of fresh squeezed orange juice
-1 cup light brown sugar
-1 cup milk (any kind can be used including almond and rice)
-1 stick unsalted butter melted (to make it lighter can use STAR butter olive oil 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp)
-2 large eggs (to make it lighter just use 3 egg whites or the equivalent of egg substitute)
-2 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-1 Tbsp real vanilla extract
-1 tsp real almond extract
-2 Tbsp ground cinnamon
-1 tsp nutmeg
-1/2 tsp cloves
SET ASIDE:
-1 cup chopped cashews (or whatever nut you like)
-1 cup dried cranberries (or whatever dried fruit you like)
1) Preheat oven to 350 F
2) Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl except for the nuts and berries
3) Spread the mixture onto two cookie sheets that have raised sides
4) Bake for 25 minutes
5) Take out of the oven, flip around, chop up, and stir
6) Bake for 5 more minutes
7) Take out and stir again
8) Bake for another 5 minutes
9) Take out and stir around some more and if it is still moist then keep repeating the baking and stirring until everything is dry and lightly toasted
Have a bowl straight out of the oven with some milk! You will thank me. Below is just a depiction of how I wrapped up some of my fresh baked granola (after cooling completely) to give as gifts. All the items used are from a fave website called Consumer Crafts.
