The Great Granola Experiment

Since we had our daughter 6+ months ago, I've been on a semi-mission, to try to get our lives pared down as much as possible without eliminating what we consider necessities (ie.cable and internet). I've learned to make bread, cinnamon buns, and homemade baby food. I try to keep 'extras' down to a minimum, but that hasn't exactly been the soaring success I had hoped it would be. But I try, and in this day and age, with the economy plodding along at the bottom of a sewer and my desire to not go back to work (at least full-time) once my mat leave is over, you have to do something to pinch pennies.

So I decided to make granola bars. From scratch. As healthily as possible.

I tend to not follow recipes, per se. I tend to use recipes more as guidelines, except when it comes to baking. Because baking is like chemistry and you don't fool with chemistry. So the 'recipe' I used today I will likely never use again, if only because I tend to avoid measuring things most of the time. Because I'm lazy.

Before someone points out that making granola bars is 'baking', I say no, it's not. I cooked more than baked, even roasted more than baked, with this recipe. The only 'baking' I did was putting the mixture on a cookie sheet. That's it.

Anyhoo, the granola bars. The 'recipe' I used was an amalgamation of this one and one from one of my mom's diabetic cookbooks. Want a healthy recipe? Use a diabetic one. Guaranteed.

Yesterday, I picked up most of the ingredients at the local bulk store. When it comes to something like this, where I only need a wee bit of this and that, I don't like to buy full sized containers - it's more than likely I won't use it in time and it'll go bad and then there's all that money down the drain. Shopping in bulk has it's downsides, too - unless you're willing to run to the scale every single time you scoop something out, it's all a crap shoot as to how much you're actually buying. And it's the bulk store -there's all those sugary goodies there, calling your name... mmm.

List o'ingredients, and like I said, they're all rough estimates:
2-3 oz raw macadamia nuts
2-3 oz raw hulled sesame seeds
24 oz rolled oats (I used the large flakes, not the small 'quick' rolled oats)
2-3 oz brown flax2-3 oz bakers red bakers bran (hard)
2 oz slivered almonds5-6 oz mini chocolate chips
6 oz orange flavoured cranberries
7-8 oz hulled raw sunflower seeds
2-3 oz wheat germ
6-7 oz blanched peanuts3/4-1 cup honey
2/3 cup brown sugar
4 tbsp margarine (although, I'm sure butter's fine, too)
splash of vanilla extract
a few shakes of cinnamon

Now, I used unsalted EVERYTHING, except the margarine. I avoid salt like the plague if I can help it. Have for over 20 years. I don't see the point in salting everything to death, but I'm going to have to get over that opinion next year when I go to culinary school.

I took all the nuts and chopped them up with my mini food processor so they were a little finer - not into a paste, but small enough that they'd blend in well with everything else. Put them into a large bowl and mixed them about a bit. Spread them onto a cookie sheet (or two) and pop them into the oven (set to 300º) for about 20 minutes to toast them. I toasted some of mine a wee bit too much, but each oven is different, each cookie sheet is different. Trial and error and all that.

In a heavy pot - and I think it has to be heavy for this, no flimsy pots for this step - melt the butter, honey, brown sugar, vanilla extract and cinnamon. Bring it to a boil, but watch it - it's sugar and can burn like there's no tomorrow if you're not careful. Turn the pot down to a slow simmer (I went right down to the last setting on the dial for this) while the nuts/grains finish toasting.

In a large bowl,put your non-nut dry ingredients. For one batch, I used raisins and chocolate chips; the other was orange-flavoured cranberries. It's personal preference, really. I'm not a big fan of dried fruit, so I tend to always go with raisins or cranberries when given the choice. Take the tray of browned nuts/grains out of the oven and pour into the bowl. A warning if you use chocolate chips - they melt. I didn't mind that they melted, though. That meant that I had a lovely chocolate flavour throughout the bar, not just whenever a chip appeared. For that reason alone, I may use more chips next time.

Stir the nuts/grains and non-nut ingredients together. Pour the hot sugar mix over the nut/grain/ etc. mixture and stir well. It has to be mixed well or it's definitely not going to work. Once everything is mixed together, spread it out on a greased, foil-lined cookie sheet (grease the foil, not the cookie sheet). Take a second sheet and press down as hard as you can - this will help compress everything so you don't end up with granola bits in the end.

Put the tray into the oven (still at 300º) for 15-20 minutes, depending on how crisp you like your bar. Here's where I had my biggest problems. My bars were set on the outside of the tray, but definitely not in the middle, so I put them back in with foil around the edges, about a 2" border (again, an estimate). Kind of worked. What worked - or at least has seemed to work at this point - is putting the tray into the oven for an additional 5 minutes (after the original 18) and turning the oven off. I left them in for about 20 minutes - they weren't cooking at the same temperature, but the heat (hopefully) should be helping with the stickiness.

I've left both trays sitting on the counter to cool completely before I cut them up. I tried cutting when they were still warm and started to make a mess, so I figured if they were allowed to cool, it might work. If it doesn't, I've got granola for cereal for the next month.

Hours later, after everything has cooled:

Perhaps waiting this long to cut them wasn't the best of ideas. An hour, maybe 2 would have been ideal; 7 hours? Yeah, no.

And the 'leave them in the oven after you turn it off' plan? Again, yeah, no. Sure, it would probably work if I cut them almost immediately, not hours later. Hours later they were hard, slightly burnt... things.

So now, I've got some raisin/chocolate and orange cranberry granola bars, as well as a lot of granola that I can use on the yogurt I don't eat. I guess this is as good of an excuse as any to start eating granola. It's either that or feed the remnants to the birds.

Lessons learned:
1. I need to be more organized. That's obvious every time I cook/bake.
2. I need to use my other camera to take photos. Yikes.
3. It's hard taking photos and making stuff at the same time. I'm surprised I didn't burn myself at some point.
4. This may be one of those things I use an actual recipe for. Next time.