All Natural Homemade Granola

This granola is SO YUMMY AND SO EASY TO MAKE! It has become an absolute staple in our house. Pete just dominates a bowl of greek yogurt if I top it with some of this crunchy granola. In fact, I don't think I could ever even get him to eat a plain bowl of nonfat, unsweetened, greek yogurt at all if it weren't for this granola.
This recipe makes enough to fill 3 large mason jars. The first time I made it, I thought 'Oh my this is way too much, I need to give away a jar or two. We will never finish all of this.' But we wound up going through all 3 of them in just a month!
It is super nutritious- packed full of fiber, vitamins, and protein ...and flavor! Flavor is an important part of nutritious food too -if it doesn't taste good, people won't eat it; if people won't eat it, what good is it! This granola shows that nuts, seeds, and whole grains are not just bird food anymore :) They're definitely nutrition worth eating.

I originally got this recipe from one of my dear friends- and college roommate- Dana. She got the recipe from her neighbor, but Dana tweaked it a bit to make it her own. Now that I've been making it for awhile, I've tweaked it a bit. That's the best kind of recipe; one that's been passed around and versatile enough to be tweaked to your own liking. Feel free to make changes to this granola to make it your own. Share any changes with me...I would have fun with your ideas to mix it up a bit next time I make it :)

This is ironic timing to share the recipe because I first tried this granola when Dana gave me a big mason jar full of this yummy granola for Christmas a few years ago. I think I just might fill a few jars to give away this Christmas as well. Tie a ribbon around the lid with a little handwritten tag and it makes a great gift for teachers, neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances, ...even a possible stocking stuffer?

RECIPE (about 12 cups or fills 3 Large Mason Jars plus a little extra) :

• 5 cups Rolled Oats
• 1 1/2 cups Shredded Coconut
• 1 cup Ground Flaxseed (or Wheat Germ)
• 1 cup Sunflower Seeds, shelled
• 2 cups Cashews, halved
• 1/2 cup Canola Oil
• 1/2 cup Honey
• 1/3 cup Water (or 1/3 cup Maple Syrup)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla
• 1 cup dried fruit (I like to use craisins. Dana used orange scented golden raisins from Sprouts Market and they were super awesome in this granola)

This makes A LOT, so before you start making this, make sure you have two jelly roll pans, OR a HUGE baking dish with like 5 inch tall walls like the one I have pictured here. I actually think two pans would be better because it will toast more evenly. I have to stir my granola often in the deep dish pan that I use. 

Then preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a bowl, mix together the oil, honey, water, salt, and vanilla. (The original recipe from Dana's neighbor gave the option of 1/3 cup water OR 1/3 cup maple syrup. I opt for the water in order to cut down on the sugar, but you can try it either way and see which you like best)

**Helpful tip: warm the honey slightly and it will combine easier with the other ingredients. 

Then, into your honey mixture dump the: oats, coconut, flaxseed (or wheat germ), sunflower seeds, and cashews. Stir well and make sure it is all mixed together and coated completely with the liquid/honey mixture. 

Spread your raw granola mixture evenly in your baking pan/pans, and bake for about 40 minutes or so (stirring every 10 minutes) until it is all golden brown. It will not be all crisp and crunchy until you pull it out of the oven and let it cool for a few minutes. So don't worry if it's golden brown but feels slightly soft -you can continue to bake it longer if you want, but as soon as it turns toasty brown colored just pull it and let it cool to a crisp.

However, BEFORE it cools, add in the one cup of dried fruit. Stir into the hot granola.

Allow to cool, and store in an airtight container. I love using the old fashioned mason jars.

We enjoy this granola in a yummy yogurt parfait with fresh strawberries during the summer. I use plain, nonfat Greek yogurt, with NO sweetener. All you need is the natural sweetness from the fruit and the granola and you'd never know that it's plain yogurt!
Good strawberries are hard to find at this time of year, so you can use any fruit that's in season, OR don't forget about frozen fruit! Just because it's frozen doesn't mean it's any less good for you... just make sure you choose frozen fruit with no sugar added.

Holiday Treats!

Christmas season is in full swing -that means parties, and parties mean FOOD! We are in the heart of potlucks and parties with family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, church groups, etc. If you need some quick ideas for holiday treats and desserts... or especially if you are invited to a cookie exchange... here are some quick ideas: 

The Sweet 'n Salty, Nutty 'n Chewy...

 Chocolate Caramel Turtles:

Nana's Peanut-Butter-Scotch Clusters:

Rich, Chewy Molasses Cookies:

Santa's request at our house every Christmas Eve...drumroll... 

Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Delightfully addicting, Christmas snowy, MUDDY BUDDIES:

World's BEST Cinnamon-Sugary Snickerdoodles:

Nutty, Chocolately, Buttery, Coconut MAGIC COOKIE BARS: 

Perfect Lemon Squares: 

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Fresh Fruit Tart

Peter and I just got back from a trip to Seattle and I just fell in LOVE with the Pikes Place Market!!! All the beautiful, colorful, produce was almost too overwhelming for me- I just wished that we had a kitchen there so that I could have an excuse to carry bags of the gorgeous fresh groceries home with me.

Alas, I had no kitchen to cook in; instead, Peter graciously started each day by taking me for a morning stroll through the market so that I could gawk and soak in the market culture that I loved to feel a part of. 

They had these huge, super juicy, sweet yellow peaches that that all the produce vendors called 'OMG' peaches or 'Oh My Goodness' peaches. I had to go visit the peaches everyday just to make sure they were still as sweet as the day before :)

When we returned home, though I didn't have Pikes Place to go to for my fresh fruit, I did get a Farm-to-Home produce box delivery! What perfect timing! It even included peaches! With so much beautiful fruit in my box, I thought a fruit tart would be perfect to make! I had the fruit, the only problem was that I didn't have a tart pan to make it in. The fruit had already magically showed up for me on my doorstep... and guess what- 1 day later, SO DID THE TART DISH I NEEDED!!! Well, it didn't show up on my doorstep, but I showed up on it's doorstep.. at a garage sale right in my own neighborhood! This was too good to be true; this tart was meant to happen!

Along with the cute white fluted tart dish, I also found a couple other thrifty finds from this 91 year old woman's garage sale:

A gorgeous antique glass vanity box with aged metal edging and claw feet, AND a cool anniversary clock glass dome. 

I filled the glass vanity box with turquoise sand from an hour glass that had broke in my living room. Then I nested a pink sea shell from my personal collection inside. 

I placed the clock dome over a flat, round, mirrored pillar candle base and displayed a beautiful piece of white coral within. 

I love repurposing my treasures to create unique beach decor for our little Laguna Beach cottage :)

Okay, enough of the nonedibles. Down to the tart business! This fruit tart is beautifully impressive looking, but incredibly easy to make. It is almost a 'no-cook' recipe. It has a shortbread crust (only 3 ingredients -and the only baked component), a cheesecake-ish filling, fresh fruit, and a lemon glaze. 

This tart is awesome for all of summertime's bountiful fruit, but you can make it all year round with whatever fruit is in season. It could also be fun to try adding some slivered nuts into the design. 

Ingredients (makes a 12" tart): 

Shortbread Crust: 

• 1 1/2 cups AP Flour
• 1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1 1/2 sticks Salted Butter, chilled and diced
• (optional: 1 teaspoon Almond Extract)

Cheesecake Filling: 

• 8 oz. Cream Cheese (Low fat optional)
• 1/2 cup Sugar
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
• Any Fresh Fruit you like (to give you an idea, the design pictured in my post here used 6 strawberries, 1/2 white peach, 1/2 yellow peach, a kiwi, and a handful of blueberries)

(Optional Glaze):

• 1/4 cup fresh Lemon Juice
• 1/4 cup Water
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 1 Tablespoon Corn Starch

Place the crust ingredients in a food processor and pulse until for about 1minute until it clumps together enough that when you squeeze it in your hand it will combine to become like playdough.

 

Press the dough into the tart pan. (You can do this way in advance and chill it covered with plastic wrap in the fridge until you're ready to bake it). 

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 12 minutes, or until it just barely begins to golden. Be careful not to over bake.

*Note, make sure the crust is cooled before you fill it

Next, mix the filling ingredients. (again, this can be done way in advance as well -stored, covered, and in the fridge until ready for use)

Spread the filling evenly into the cooled shortbread crust.

Then have fun decorating with your sliced fruits, but don't put on the berries until after you've painted the glaze. It doesn't ruin the berries or anything, but the berries don't stay in place like the other fruit does while painting the glaze. Plus, the glaze works as somewhat of an adhesive to keep the berries in place when you set them around the top :)

You don't HAVE to use the glaze (though I highly recommend it) on your tart, but it is good for a few reasons: 1) it makes the fruit super glossy and appealing looking, 2) if you make your tart ahead of time, it can help to prevent the fruit from drying out or turning brown, and 3) IT TASTES GOOD too!

If using, you can mix all the glaze ingredients together with a fork or a whisk and bring it to a light boil in a saucepan until it thickens, or just microwave it in a pyrex measuring cup for about 30 seconds to thicken it. 

If it gets too thick to paint, just stir in a little water to thin it out a little bit. If it isn't thick enough, heat it a little longer until it thickens more.

Paint the glaze over the fruit, and then polka dot any berries on top.

See that beautiful glossy shine!

You can see the ring of alternating yellow and white peach slices, the strawberry border, the kiwi center, and the blueberry polka dots. 

And here my new tart dish even fits perfectly atop the cake stand I got from Aunt Peggy at my bridal shower 2 years ago!

Isn't it just lovely! I LOVE all the colors! 

It's so fun playing around with the natural shapes and colors to see what patterns and designs you can make with them!

Magic Cookie Bars

This is the golden oldie, the classic, the 'magic cookie bar'. It's the recipe that we all grew up with from the back of the sweetened condensed milk can. It has been years since I've had these, so I don't know what made me think of making them now, but they were even better than I remembered! Or maybe they were just so good because they fueled us for a full weekend of skiing. I took these snacks with us on our last ski trip of the season this year. Closing weekend was in April, and we were definitely there to say sayonara to ski season 2012.


Peter is a BIG snowboarder. His family took wintertime snow trips to the mountains, whereas my family was more of a summer beach vacation kind of fam. So when Peter and I started dating, I recognized that his snow sportiness was definitely one thing we did not share in common... yet. We loved playing soccer together in college, and volleyball and softball during our first summer dating, but snowboarding was something I was yet to learn. My time had come to learn when our first winter came around that we were dating. I so badly wanted to learn to snowboard because I knew he loved it so much. But learning to snowboard with Peter was like baptism by fire; I got thrown right into solid 4 day ski trips with him and his buddies. I pictured a few hours of learning each afternoon, but with this group it was first chair in the morning to last run of the evening. Like I said, baptism by fire. That first trip, I came home and had lost 5 lbs! Long hard days on the mountain burns some serious calories!


But Peter was such a patient teacher, and soon enough I had picked  up snowboarding and fallen in love... with snowboarding too :) Now, I have been snowboarding with him (and our friends) for 4 years already. Snowboarding has definitely become another fun activity that we share together. However, I also now know to pack some much needed calorie dense treats for our long days on the slopes. Most recently, I made these magic cookie bars and everyone in our group LOVED them. They made for a perfect mountain treat. I think they may become a new ski trip tradition for us :) 


Shopping List (makes a 9x13 casserole dish): 

• 1/2 cup Butter (1 stick)
• 1 1/2 cups Graham Cracker Crumbs (1 wrapped sleeve out of a box)
• 1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk
• 2 cups Semisweet Chocolate Chips
• 1 1/3 cups flaked Coconut
• 1 cup chopped Walnuts

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. 

In a microwavable bowl, melt your butter:

Once the butter is melted, add the graham cracker crumbs into the bowl and combine well with the melted butter:

Press this crumb mixture firmly into a 9x13 casserole dish to make the bottom layer of your magic bars:

Then pour the can sweetened condensed milk over the crumb layer: 

Evenly sprinkle the chocolate chips, the coconut flakes, and the walnuts over the condensed milk layer. Press these top ingredients gently down into the condensed milk:

Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until the coconut flakes look golden and toasty on top:

Allow it to cool slightly before cutting into squares:

And box these bad boys up for a road trip to the slopes :)

But be sure to taste test one while it's still a little warm :)

Cranberry-White Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are such pretty cookies. The burgundy and the white just make them so fancy looking. Definitely a good change from the casual classic Chocolate chip cookie. They are great for special occassions in the office, Valentines day, and they are also great for the Holidays- baked goods and cranberries just scream 'Christmas time'! In fact, these are the cookies that Santa requested for Christmas eve at our house this year. Peter Santa LOVES these! 

Ingredient List:

1/2 cup Butter, softened

1/2 cup White Sugar

1/2 cup packed Brown Sugar

1 Egg

1 1/2 teaspoons Vanilla

1 1/2 cups Flour

1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 cup dried Cranberries

1 cup White Chocolate Chips

In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugars:

Then beat in the eggs and vanilla. Lastly, add the flour and baking soda and mix until just barely combined. (do not over mix here because you have to stir again when you add the chips and berries, and overmixing the flour will yield tough little cookies):

Fold in the dried cranberries and white choc chips:

Spoon dough balls onto baking sheet about 2 inches apart:

Bake at 375°F for 8 - 10 minutes or until cookies are lightly goldened.

This sounds silly, but whack the entire cookie sheet onto your countertop to release air from your cookies before you transfer them to a wire rack to cool. This will help to start the flattening process if you don't like fluffy, cakey cookies (like me). I love chewy cookies-Mmmmm..  No cakey cookies here! :)

New Year's Cranberry-Orange Scones

For my first post of the new year, it's appropriate that I post a new rendition of an old recipe: Cranberry-Orange Scones. 


The original one on my blog is slightly more light fluffy as opposed to these ones. In the original version I used milk instead of ff half & half (which yields a more dense scone). I also made that dough more wet as opposed to these scones, that's because I wasn't into the big puffy scones back then. I used to think that traditional scones were too dry and crumbly. But I've found that homemade scones are much better than the kind that sit behind the glass at a the corner store. When homemade with love, these scones are moist on the inside, golden on the outside, and have buttery flakey layers all throughout. Now I much prefer the puffy, flakey traditional scone :) 


The cherry almond scones (that I posted some time ago) really were the biggest influence on my conversion to become a true scone-lover. So I fashioned these cranberry orange scones to be very similar to those ones. If you've got a good thing going... keep goin' with it!


Last week, Peter and I were out in Palm Springs visiting his Grandparents house for a belated Christmas with them. It was so fun out there. Grandma Joanie made a delicious Christmas feast and had her house all decked out with garlands and christmas lights- indoors and out! However, when you stepped outside it felt like anything but winter. The sun was shining, the air was warm, and the fruit trees were bountiful! Grandma Joanie gave us a pair of clippers and some bags and sent us into the backyard to lighten the load on the branches of her citrus trees. We came home with enough oranges and grapefruits to last us 'till summer! With all of these fresh oranges, I figured it was a perfect time to bake some cranberry orange scones. 


Recipe (for 4 large scones): 

• 1 3/4 cups AP Flour
• 3 generous Tablespoons Sugar (plus extra for sprinkling on top)
• 3 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 1/4 teaspoon Salt
• 1/3 cup Butter, COLD and diced into small bits
• 1 Egg, cold
• 1-2 Tablespoons Orange Zest, (the zest of about 1-2 oranges, 1 is fine and 2 gives a much stronger citrus flavor; so it's your choice :)
• 1/3 cup COLD Fat-Free Half & Half (or regular half & half, or heavy cream, or whatever you prefer... I like to use fat free half & half)
• 1/2 cup dried Cranberries (or 'Craisins')

Glaze:

• 1/2 cup Powdered Sugar
• 2 Tablespoons Orange Juice

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. In a large bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, baking powder and salt (this is in place of sifting the ingredients): 

Then take your already-diced butter out of the fridge and mix it into your flour mixture until the butter dices break down into smaller pieces and your mixture looks somewhat crumbly. 


After your butter is well combined into the flour mixture and it looks somewhat crumbly, switch your Kitchen Aid attachment to the dough hook and add in the egg and the orange zest until well combined. Finally, add the half & half while the dough is mixing. Continue to mix until all the dough is just moist and then add in the cranberries. Allow to mix until all is combined but not over-worked (you want tender flakey scones not tough ones, so don't over mix that dough here or else the gluten in the flour will get overworked and yield tough scones)

Shape your dough into a circle, slice it into quarters, and arrange them on a parchment paper or silpat covered baking sheet.

 Paint them with an egg wash (one egg + 1 Tbsp milk) or some of your half & half. Sprinkle the tops with granulated or turbinado sugar.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until the top and edges just barely start to turn golden. (while your scones are baking, use this time to make the glaze)

Transfer scones to a cooling rack, and wait a few minutes before drizzling with your orange glaze. If you don't wait for them to cool a little bit, then the heat from the scones will make the glaze melt right off! So try to wait at least a few minutes.... it's okay if you can't wait, it'll still taste good :)

Coffee is always good with scones, but hot cocoa is especially good with these ones because the chocolate complements both orange and cranberry flavors :)

*on a side note, isn't that the cutest mug! My friend Laurie got it for me for Christmas. I love the mug's little 'pot belly'... good for holding lots of coffee or tea or cocoa :)