Awesome Granola / Trailmix
By: Blooming Foodie
Published: Friday, March 25, 2011 - 1:06pm

Ingredients




1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 cups rolled oats
2 cups nuts or seeds

Preparation

1 Dissolve brown sugar in water. 2 Microwave for five minutes. 3 Add salt and vanilla extract. 4 Stir syrup into 8 cups of oats. 5 Fold in 2 cups of nuts.  S 6 Pread the granola onto cookie sheets (covered with a silpat, parchment paper, or sprayed with cooking oil). 7 Squeeze the granola into clumps as you spread it onto the sheets. 8 Bake at 275° for 45 min. – 1 hr. 9 The granola will be chewy when it first comes out. 10 Let it cool so that it is crisp before you store it.

About


There are tons of recipes out there for granola and trail mix.  Some are healthy, some, not so much, and many fall right in between.  I found a few that I would like to try so I can end up with a couple of “go to” recipes to have on hand when I’m in the mood to make something sweet, but I’m trying to be good. 
This was the first recipe I tried, because it didn’t include any sweetened condensed milk or chocolate of any type…..it does have brown sugar, but it is still a nice healthy alternative for snacking.  It’s from Cooking Thin; you can find a video of it on Foodnetwork.com.
It was a simple recipe, taking only minutes to put together, and it tastes awesome! 
Since I love cinnamon, I took the liberty of adding ½ teaspoon of cinnamon, ‘cause who doesn’t love oats and cinnamon!  I used whole raw cashews in my mix, and man, when those babies came out of the oven all toasted up, I found myself just picking through and eating the cashews….they were delicious, especially when they were still warm.  Once the granola had cooled and was ready to be stored, I added ½ - 1 cup of dried cherries and apricots, cut into bite-sized chunks.