Homemade Granola

Homemade granola sounds hard or at least it did to me, until I tried it. I love it, its so easy to make, delicious and healthy. As a bonus this could very easily be made gluten free, if you buy certified gluten free products. My first attempt ended in a slightly burnt granola, but good never the less. Oh and the prunes I put in it where rock hard and had to be picked out. I don't have a fancy pan to make it in, just a plain old cake pan. Here is the original recipe I used http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/cherry-almond-and-cinnamon-granola-recipe/index.html I didn't have cherry's, so I used diced prunes, which are awesome. I was worried when buying what I needed that the almonds would be expensive. They are, but if you buy whole almonds and chop them yourself you save a couple of bucks. One bag of whole almonds made two batches of granola for me. I tried chopping them in my food processor and in my coffee grinder like I did the flax seed. Yeah I had huge chunks and almond flour at the same time. So out came the cutting board. I can't seem to not tweak recipes, so here is my version of granola. I hope you have better luck with your first batch than I did.

This is before adding oil and honey.

Flax Seed Granola
4 cups rolled oats
2 cups sweetened coconut flakes
2 cups chopped almonds (cheaper than sliced)
1 cup coarsely ground flax seeds
1/2 cup coconut oil
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp nutritional yeast
Preheat oven to 350. Mix the first 4 ingredients in a large bowl. Mix the oil and honey together and pour on the dry ingredients, mixing well. It takes a fair amount of mixing. Sprinkle cinnamon and yeast on top. Mix well, again this takes a bit of stirring. Bake in cake pan or whatever pan works. When you baking stir it often, like every 5 minutes or so. I flatten it back out when I do so it cooks more evenly. Bake it until it is a nice golden brown. Let it cool stirring occasionally. I stored mine in mason jars and it lasted several weeks. Makes a great bowl of cereal and my boys liked it. Sorry I haven't perfected putting fruit in it yet, but you can always sprinkle it on top. Its also very good in yogurt, come to think of it I need to make more yogurt now that I have made more granola.

Just placed in the oven.

All done, kind of hard to tell the difference in the pictures, but its done I promise.