Easy Basic Homemade Granola

Name: Easy Basic Homemade Granola
Prep time: 7 min
Cook time: 90 min
Total time: 97 min
Yield: 24 cups
Ingredients: 8 cups quick oats; 8 cups rolled oats*; 3 cups brown sugar**; 2 cups wheat germ (optional); 2 cups coconut flakes; 1 cup sunflower seeds or nuts (optional); 2 tsp. salt; 2 tsp. cinnamon; 2 cups canola/vegetable oil or melted butter; 2 tsp. vanilla; raisins, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, Craisins, dried apricots (can add any of these once the granola is cooled)

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A super easy basic homemade granola recipe- perfect for a healthy breakfast, snack or parfait! Love that it uses only simple pantry ingredients and takes just minutes to mix together. It freezes well too!

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Back when my husband and I were dating, his family was living as missionaries in Romania, so Vince was living by himself and had to buy all of his own food and make all of his own meals. And well, let’s just say that he’s very much a minimalist and it definitely showed in his menus! 😉 So I often took pity on him and made him food that I’d send home with him when he came to visit me on the weekends.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that he really liked homemade granola. So, one week I started digging through cookbooks looking for a recipe to make for him. My family never ate granola and I probably only had ever eaten it a handful of times here and there at friend’s houses, so I really didn’t know what constituted a “good” homemade granola recipe.

Some granola recipes looked complicated. And others, while they sounded kind of good, called for expensive ingredients. I finally came across a very basic granola recipe in an old, trustworthy church cookbook that I often used. It looked super easy to make and I figured I’d just take a chance and hope that it pleased my guy. Obviously it did, because I’ve been making that same simple granola recipe for the last 10 years!

The thing that we love about homemade granola is that, at least for this recipe, it’s inexpensive plus it keeps us full much, much longer than store-bought cereal does.

When my husband eats bought cereal, he literally has to eat half the box to get enough to keep him full until lunchtime. (He has a job that requires lots of manual labor, which obviously makes a difference.) With this easy homemade granola, roughly 1 ½ cups is all that it takes to keep him going until lunch. We also love that it’s a relatively healthy option, too!

This recipe is super versatile and can easily be changed up to suit your tastes. Play around with it, add in other things that you love- make it yours! It’s very forgiving and is hard to mess up. I should warn you though that it does make a big batch. So if you prefer, you can always half the recipe. Or since it freezes well, you could also just make the full amount and freeze half of it!

And of course, you can also use this yogurt to make homemade parfaits. This simple recipe works perfectly for them and makes them super easy and affordable.