Granola is one of those things that I’ve become so used to making myself, I can’t imagine regularly buying it pre-made. Store-bought granola is often pretty expensive, and usually way too sweet for me. Plus, once you find a basic recipe you like, there are tons of ways you can change it up to keep it from getting boring. Swap out the nuts, the spices, or even the type of oil, and suddenly it’s like a whole new granola. When I spotted some coconut almond granola at the grocery store, I took my stand-by recipe and gave it a few tweaks to make Coconut Ginger Almond Granola.
Coconut Ginger Almond Granola
5 cups rolled oats
2 cups barley flakes
1 1/2 cups unsweetened dried coconut flakes
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup ground flax seeds
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup candied ginger, chopped (optional)
Preheat oven to 300 F. Cover two rimmed baking sheets with silicon mats or parchment paper.
Combine the ground flax seeds and water in a bowl or large glass measuring cup. Whisk together and refrigerate at least 15 minutes, until thickened.
In a very large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients and stir together to mix. Add the melted coconut oil and vanilla extract, and stir to mix. Whisk the thickened flaxseeds and water, then add to the dry ingredients, and stir until evenly mixed.
Divide the granola between the baking sheets and press into thin layers. To help the granola cook evenly, leave an open circle a few inches in diameter in the middle of each of the pans.
Bake 30 minutes. Rotate pans and switch shelves. Bake another 30 minutes and turn over granola with a spatula. Bake another 20-30 minutes until lightly browned. The granola will still be soft at this point, but will crisp as it cools.
Remove from the oven and allow the granola to cool in the pan. If adding candied ginger, mix it in to the cooled granola. Transfer it to an air-tight container for storage.
Notes:
- I like my granola chunky, so to achieve chunks, I use ground flax seeds mixed with water. I’ve tried tons of things to get chunks, and this seems to work the best. For some reason, pre-ground flaxseed meal doesn’t seem to work as well as grinding my own flax seeds. I use my spice grinder to grind up a bunch into a meal, then store it in my freezer. A food processor would probably work for this, too.
- The other thing that helps keep the granola chunky is turning it with a spatula, rather than stirring it. If you don’t care about chunks, feel free to stir it, but if you want it chunky, try to keep the sheets of granola intact when you turn them over.
- This granola isn’t especially sweet, but you can cut down the sugar even further, to 3/4 cup.
- The barley flakes can be subbed out for additional rolled oats, or rye flakes.
- This makes a lot of granola. Unless you halve the recipe, you’ll need a big bowl to stir it up. I use the largest version of this bowl from Ikea.
The baked granola, with circle in the (approximate) middle.
