Homemade Granola (GF,DF,VEGAN,PALEO)

A darling and delicious gift idea! Especially for the Holidays!

I am so excited to share my granola recipe! This recipe is absolutely delicious, satisfying and 100% Gluten Free, Dairy Free, refined sugar free, and it’s also Paleo! I don’t normally come up with my own recipes…but when I was searching for a Gluten and Dairy free granola recipe that did’t have a bunch of added sugar, I figured, why not try my own? This granola is great on yogurt, with milk, on top of ice cream, or to just eat as a satisfying snack. It’s also a great gift! Put it in a mason jar, tie a bow around that sucker, and you’ve got a thoughtful, creative, delicious gift. Here’s how I did it…

What You’ll Need:

-2 C Certified Gluten Free Oats

-1 C Raw Cashews

-1/4 C Raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)

-1/4 C Raw Walnuts – chopped

-1/4 C Raw Pecans -chopped

-Unsweetened, dried Bing Cherries

-Unsweetened, dried raisins

-1/4 C Melted Coconut Oil

-1/4 C 100% Pure Maple Syrup such as Coombs Familly Farm’s 100% Maple Syrup

-1/8 C Unprocessed honey such as YS Organic Bee Farms honey

-3 shakes Sea Salt

-5 shakes Cinnamon

FYI- you can get all of these ingredients at Trader Joe’s for a better price than normal grocery stores! (Nuts are expensive!)

Preheat the oven to 300 Degrees.

Combine the oats, cashews, walnuts, pecans, pepitas in a large bowl. Melt the coconut butter (in a separate container, like a pyrex) in the microwave until it becomes liquid. Poor over ingredients in bowl. Pour the maple syrup and honey into the bowl. Add your cinnamon. Mix well with a wooden spoon. Your granola should be moist and look wet! If it doesn’t add more liquid, as needed. I promise it won’t ruin the granola if you add more! You can taste the granola at this stage, there is nothing that cannot be eaten raw here. Taste it! If you think it needs some more cinnamon, add some more! Transfer the wet mixture to a baking sheet. (It should all fit on one). Place it in the preheated oven for 1 hour, checking and turning the mixture every 20 minutes. It is incredibly important that you check the granola every 20 minutes. Take a flat spatula and flip the granola in sections so it cooks evenly on both sides! This will help prevent burning!

Once the granola is a light golden brown, take it out of the oven. Let it cool. Sprinkle with sea salt while it’s still warm. Once completely cooled, mix in dried cherries and raisins. ***if you make the mistake of adding the dried fruit in the granola before you bake it, don’t worry. Continue baking as you would without the dried fruit in it. Once the granola is out of the oven and cooled, you can pick out the burnt pieces of fruit and mix in the dried, unburnt fruit. Adding the fruit first won’t hurt the rest of your granola, but you will have little pieces of crispy burntness, that you definitely don’t want to eat!

Another great thing about this recipe apart from it being DF, GF, Sugar Free, etc, is that you can add or omit whatever you like.

Here are some ideas:

-chopped almonds instead of cashews

-dried cranberries instead of raisins/cherries

-pistachios instead of pecans/walnuts (how great would pistachios and dried cranberries be in this together!? YUM)

-sunflower seeds instead of pepitas

-you can also add raw unsweetened coconut flakes, I add them a lot to this recipe, and they are so good! Be sure to add it before baking so they get nice and crispy!

Be sure to let me know if you mix and match this recipe! Would love to hear how your creation turns out!

Enjoy!