OK friends, here is a recipe from my good friend Jen Dekorte. It is versatile, easy, and super yummy! This is the original recipe. However, you can use any muffin mix you like, any nuts, any fruit! Jen recommended trying the Krusteaz Brand muffin mix called Cinnabon. She also said she has cut the brown sugar and they still turned out great. For the bar version (which I did), just add a little more water to moisten it up and pat firmly onto a baking sheet and nix the “flipping and mixing” part of the granola recipe. Slice into bars when it comes out of the oven. Then let it cool completely before removing the bars from the pan. Makes roughly one full cookie sheet.
Ingredients:
3 cups oats (not quick oats)
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup milled/ ground flax seeds
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup blown sugar unpacked
1 1/2 cup banana nut dry muffin mix (or one of your choice)
1/4 cup hot water
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup veg oil
1/4 cup crushed pecans
1/4 cup crushed banana chips
Directions:
- add first 6 ingredients together and mix well.
- add next 3 wet ingredients together in a measuring glass and mix well.
- add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until fully integrated.
- place the granola mixture on baking sheets. Make sure that there is no area higher than an inch to assure that it cooks fairly evenly.
- bake at 325 degrees for 30 minute. Make sure to take granola pans out of oven every 10 minutes to mix/toss/crumble.
- let the granola cool and add the pecans and banana chips lastly.
The recipe above makes for about 16 1/2 cup servings (8 cups in total), but I like to double it to have enough in stock since my boys like it so much. We have been really enjoying it sprinkled on our yogurt and fruit in the morning. Yum yum! Also, we have made a blueberry version of this by changing out the muffin mix to a blueberry one and adding almond slices and dried blueberries instead of the pecans and banana chips.