I haven’t made granola in a quite a while and I thought I’d make this batch a little different.  Instead of using nut butter, I substituted canned pumpkin and it was YUMMY!

Pumpkin Granola

Dry Ingredients:

6 cups oats

1 cup oat or wheat bran

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup raw pumpkin seeds

2 cups raisins

Wet Ingredients:

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg (freshly grated is best)

1/4 tsp allspice

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1 TB blackstrap molasses

1 tsp vanilla

3/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  In a large roasting pan, combine all of the ingredients labeled “dry ingredients” above.  In a small bowl, combine all of the ingredients labeled “wet ingredients” above.  Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and stir to coat all of the oats.  If the oats look dry, add some more canned pumpkin.  Bake for about 1 hour, stirring every 10 minutes.  You’ll know it’s done when it begins to sound crispy when you stir it (I know this sounds weird, but you’ll know what I mean when you make it).

After a trip to the grocery store, where a teeny tiny bag of granola costs more than $3 and is full of sugar and fat, I decided that it was time to bust out the cookbooks and figure out how to make it myself. My mom makes a really yummy granola, but it is loaded with butter and sugar, so I unfortunately couldn’t turn to that recipe. One of my favorite cookbooks, How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, came to my rescue. Even though the book is not specifically vegan, it is my new favorite because it has TONS of recipes in it and many of the recipes can be made vegan very easily. If you are considering becoming a vegetarian, this will be your bible.

Back to the granola… I flipped to the table of contents and found the basic granola recipe. To my surprise, it didn’t have any butter in it and there was a handy chart with all sorts of things that could be added to the granola to change it up. I went for the very plain style granola and decided to add in a few things not listed in the chart to boost the nutritional value. Here is the recipe that I created, based on the one in the book:

Healthy Granola

6 cups of oats

2 cups of nuts, chopped (I used 1 cup of pecans, and 1/2 cup each of almonds and pistachios)

1 cup pumpkin seeds

2 cups (or more) of dried fruit (I used cranberries, apples, apricots and white peaches)

1/2 cup maple syrup (the real deal, not Log Cabin)

1/2 cup any nut butter (I’ve used cashew and almond. Both turn out tasting pretty much the same)

1 TB ground flaxseeds

1 TB wheat germ

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Put all of the dry ingredients into a large roasting pan. Combine the nut butter with the maple syrup and heat it up in the microwave (or on the stove, if you prefer) to stir them together. Add the flaxseeds and wheat germ to the syrup/nut butter mixture, mix it up really well, and pour over the oats, nuts and fruit. Toss it together to coat all of the dry ingredients. Pop it into the oven to bake. You will need to stir it often to keep it from burning. It will be done when the oats are crispy (you’ll know what I mean when you make it). This granola is really good! I have been eating it for breakfast every morning with some vanilla soy milk and it keeps me full until lunch. It’s just sweet enough without being overwhelming. Next time, I may add more flaxseeds and wheat germ because you really can’t taste them at all. I was worried at first that it would be too much and they would be overpowering, but I think it will be safe to add more and still have them be imperceptible. This makes a big batch of granola and it will keep in the fridge probably indefinitely.