I’m addicted to this stuff and I can’t get enough. This is my current favorite snack and I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t have this around as my go-to when I don’t feel like making something.
Here’s what I do:
Ingredients: (this varies from week-to-week depending what I actually have on hand)
4 cups steel cut oats
2 cups buckwheat
1/2 cup coconut flakes
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/2 cup hemp hearts
1/4 cup chia seeds
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup poppy seeds
1/2 cup raw hazlenuts
1/2 cup raw walnuts
1/2 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup dried white mulberries
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup dried white chickpeas (these might be hard to find, but there a nice way to get some beany-fiber into this)
25 deglet noor dates
1 Tbsp cinnamon *all of these spices I use to taste
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
2 Tbsp vanilla
3 Tbsp ground flax seeds
Method
Preheat oven to 275F on convection. If you don’t have a convection oven, I recommend using 325F. It may take a little longer overall. Pro-tip – don’t be slavish to these times. Use your sense of smell in the kitchen. More often than not, when it’s smelling amazing, it’s probably close to done.
In a big bowl large enough to stir all of the ingredients once they’ve been put together, add the oats and buckwheat. Mix.
In another small bowl, make your flax egg, by combining the ground flax with water in equal parts. Set aside to thicken.
In a VitaMix or other decently powerful blender, add the dates, spices and vanilla, plus enough water to cover the dates. Blend until heavenly. Set aside. This works a lot better for getting the spicy flavor into the granola, rather than just tossing the dried spices into the dried mixture.
Add all of the seeds to the flax mixture and whisk to incorporate and distribute. Add more water to thin, but mindful not to add too much. Adding the seeds to the flax mixture keeps them clumped together and prevents you from just having a bowl of “fallen” seeds as your final bit of granola.
Add remaining nuts that you’re using, but none of the fruit. Give all of this a stir to incorporate.
Pour the flax and seeds mixture into the oats and buckwheat and your spiced date goo. Turn all of this over several times in the bowl to incorporate well.
Using as many baking sheets as necessary, pour the wet mixture onto parchment paper lined pans and spread out so that it’s not more than about 1/2″ thick on the baking sheet.
Bake for about 20 minutes. Remove and turn over granola. Bake for another 20 minutes. Remove and turn over again. At this point, I turn off the oven and leave it inside to continue drying out. You want to strike a balance between getting a nice crunchy granola, but not one cooked so hard as to be developing nasty acrylamides. The granola will crunch up some once it’s out of the oven and sits, but it can’t be too “wet” or it’ll just stay clumped, but not crunchy.
Once it’s in pretty good shape, you can pull it out and let it cool on the counter. It’s at this point that I like to add the raisins, mulberries, dried chick peas, and a little more coconut that’s not toasted. Let it sit out for at least an hour to dry out some more before putting in an air-tight container for storage. I’ve had it easily last 7-10 days, though it rarely makes it around that long. I love to have a bowl for breakfast or evening snack with a handful of blueberries that I froze over the summer. My current favorite for an alt-milk is Milkadamia’s unsweetened macadamia milk. I thinkit goes great with the granola and it’s fortified with B12 and doesn’t have any added oil like a lot of alt-milks on the market. About the only thing I don’t like about it is that it comes from Australia, which is stupid far away to be getting my milk from, but since this is currently about the only processed thing that I am buying at all right now, I’ll let it ride until I can find something that I like as well that comes from here, or I can find the extra time to keep making my own alt-milks from scratch.