Homemade Vegan Paleo Granola

I miss cereal and milk. Almost all cereals are made up of refined flours and lots and lots of sugar and additives… so at some point I relegated cereal to the “snack” category in my brain and stopped buying it.

Then! Just recently one of my favorite bloggers (who got married on the same day as us!) posted about a paleo-granola recipe that is nut and coconut-oil based, so I was super eager to try it too. She got her recipe from the Delighted Momma (a new blog for me) so I made a trip or two to Trader Joe’s to gather up my ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of pecans
• 1 cup of hazelnuts (these didn’t look “peeled” to me, but I didn’t see any other kind at TJ’s)
• 1 cup of raw almonds
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds (my addition)
• 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds (my addition)
• 1/2 cup organic raisins (my addition)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (my addition)
• 1/4 cup of roasted flax seeds (did you know you’re supposed to store these in the fridge??)
• 1 cup of coconut oil (measure it out while it is in solid form not melted)
• 2 tbs of honey
• 1/2 tsp of salt (I used kosher)
• 1 tbs of cacao powder (I didn’t have this so didn’t include)
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 1 tsp of cinnamon (I FORGOT THIS!)
• 1/2 cup + 1 tbs of unsweetened shredded coconut  (I didn’t have this and couldn’t find it at TJ’s, so didn’t include)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees
2. Place all your nuts in a food processor and pulse a few times until you have a granola like consistency.  Don’t over process!
3. In a small pot melt and mix together the coconut oil, honey, vanilla, and salt.
4. Add the mixed nuts to the melted mixture and coat your “granola” really well. (You would think that a small pot is too small… but it coats really easily so don’t worry about the size of your pot. I think I used a 1.5qt saucepan)

Here’s my coated granola! So pretty!

5. Place granola on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. (I would recommend a sheet of parchment paper over a silpat for easy transition to storage)

Baking baking baking

6. Let cool and eat just like you would eat any other granola!

Store granola in an airtight container in your fridge. Tip: I just carefully picked up my parchment paper lining into a big glass tupperware — less clean up and easy storage!

If you like your granola clumpy, I would set it out a few hours before you eat it because after being in the fridge, it’s pretty hard to get clumps — I “scrape” at it with a big spoon to get a more cereal-like consistency.

Let me know if you try it! I’m still making my way through my batch but have tons of nuts and ingredients leftover so I’ll definitely be making more. I just bought raw cacao nibs off Amazon (instead of powder… don’t ask why) so I’ll probably add it to my melting mixture next time (I’m a chocaholic but would love it if raw grows on me… 0 sugar!). I will also probably NOT include flax seeds next time–I keep trying and trying and trying to like them, but no dice. Can’t like everything, right?