Easy Granola

Easy Granola is quick, delicious, and a great addition to breakfast!

Today, I was in a granola mood. I've been meaning to make a batch for approximately 1 billion days or something like that. :) This morning as I was doing dishes, putting dinner in the crockpot, and making breakfast, I thought...why not? And so I did. And it was easy and delicious. I adapted a recipe from Alton Brown - the biggest change is that I cut the brown sugar out all together. My goal was to make something healthy for us to put on our plain greek yogurt for breakfast parfaits. I think granola is ridiculously flexible in the flavor department and I'm looking forward to experimenting more! This would also be a cinch to make gluten free with gluten free oats and it's naturally dairy free.

Easy Granola

EASY GRANOLA

3 cups old-fashioned oat
1 c. pecans, chopped
1 c. almonds, chopped or slivered
3/4 c. plus a little more coconut
2 tsp. cinnamon (I actually used cinnamon plus which has a mix of spices)
1/4 oil
1/4 plus 2 TB. maple syrup
3/4 tsp of salt

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Combine the oats, nuts, coconut, and cinnamon in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the oil, syrup, and salt. Pour the liquids over the dry and stir until thoroughly combined. Evenly spread the mixture on a large bar pan. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes until golden brown - stirring every 15 minutes. Let cool and store in an airtight container

That's it! Super easy, super delicious and totally adaptable. Next time I will add a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract to the wet ingredients. You can add raisins after it comes out if you like that. I'm dreaming of all the variations - orange almond, apple cinnamon, vanilla coconut, cranberry spice...

Baker's Delight: Lime Shortbread

First, don't forget to enter our great giveaway! It ends tomorrow!

This weekend I needed to make a quick dessert and so I turned to one of my newest cookbooks, Bon Appetit Dessert. Heather actually gave me this amazing cookbook for my birthday and I just couldn't wait to start trying the delicious recipes! This recipe was for Lemon Shortbread Squares but I switched it up to to make them lime. We LOVED them! I doubled the recipe and put them in a 12x18 bar pan which made them thinner than the original recipe but it was perfect for us. These are just so good and so incredibly easy!



LIME SHORTBREAD
(Adapted from Bon Appetit Desserts)
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1/2 c. sugar
1 Tb. finely grated lime peel
3/4 c. unsalted butter, room temperature
1 Tb. fresh lime juice
2 Tb. cornstarch
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 c. flour

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spray pan with nonstick spray.

Using fingertips, rub sugar and lime peel together in large bowl to release essential oils in peel. Add butter. Using electric mixer, beat until mixture in light and fluffy. Beat in lime juice, then cornstarch, and salt, Add flour and beat just until blended. Using fingers, press dough firmly and evenly over bottom of prepared pan. Pierce dough all over with fork.

Bake shortbread until cooked through and just golden brown, about 50 minutes. Cool in pan on rack 10 minutes. Cut and enjoy. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.