Homemade Granola

My nephew's 4th birthday party is next week. He loves honey. He calls it "bee juice." He really loves my "honey granola", or that's what he calls it because I make it with honey. As part of his gift, he's getting a whole bunch of honey granola.

You can make this with anything. I buy everything from the bulk food section of a local health food store. Any dried fruit, nuts, yogurt covered anything, chocolate chips, whatever.

Here I have jelly beans (because I'm making it for a 4 year old for his bday. It's gotta have something exciting! At least they are organic.), dates, banana chips (he calls those banana candy), and crystallized ginger. For the healthy stuff in the back, it's rolled oats, oat bran, and flax seeds.

NOTE: I doubled this recipe so I could give my nephew a lot and I could keep a lot. So everything you see in the pictures is doubled what the recipe says.

Melt 3 tblsp butter over med-low heat. Add 1/2 cup brown sugar.

Add 1/2 cup honey or syrup (use real syrup!).

  Add 1.5 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 cup water

Stir until combined.

Add 4.5 cups rolled oats.

Add 1 cup of any combo of any germ, bran, seed, etc. you want (wheat germ, oat bran, flax seed, whatever). I am using flax seed and oat bran.

Stir to mix. If you are using raw (unroasted) nuts, add them here. They will roast in the oven with the granola. If you have roasted nuts, add them later with the fruit & whatever else you are adding. I did not use nuts this time.

Spread on a cookie sheet (I doubled the recipe, so a single recipe only needs 1 cookie sheet)

 Cook at 250 degrees for about 1.5 hours. Stir every 15-20 minutes. It will turn a golden brown.

There's my goodies. Jelly beans, dates, banana chips, crystallized ginger.

Let it cool on the pan.

Stir in your goodies. I put all the jelly beans in my nephew's batch and split everything else between the 2 of us. I will get a fun tin (Spiderman or whatever is cool now) to put his in.

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