Granola… Granola… Granola…  I have  could eat this by the bowlful.  Mostly I fill a bowl with fresh berries or fruit, add a little almond milk and granola.  Breakfast of champions, I say.  How about starting your morning off with a bowl of coconut yogurt topped with granola.
This recipe is adaptable and you get to choose the ingredients you like.  If you only like oats in your granola then cut out all the other items listed and add more oats to replace them.  If your favourite dried fruit is apricots, by all means, add them instead.  Make my recipe your starting place.  I prefer organic cane sugar in my recipes.  However, I wanted to test a few recipes with coconut sugar to be sure that it works well in this recipe.  There is a slight difference in taste, more of a molasses type of flavour you can pick up on.  Also as you can see, the finished colour of the granola is slightly darker when using coconut sugar.  I prefer using organic cane sugar in this recipe but coconut, brown, and regular granulated white sugars works too.

I left my DSLR battery charger somewhere so I had to use my iPhone for these pictures.  But hey.. You get the picture 😉

Place all the dry ingredients in a large bowl, you can add the dried fruit after baking if you prefer (Certain dried fruit like raisins could burn in the oven if this granola is overcooked)Stir to mix evenlyAdd the cane sugar, honey, coconut manna, salt and heat over medium heat until dissolved and combined.  I used coconut sugar if you use cane sugar or granulated sugar the colour will not be as dark amber as above.  Also if your coconut manna is hard you will need to pre-melt the jar and give it a stir before measuring the desired amount.
As soon as the sugar is melted and all the ingredients are joined together, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.
Pour the sauce over the dry ingredients.Toss and stir the granola until all the sauce is evenly distributed.  This take two to three minutes.
The granola will need to be baked in the oven for 30-35 minutes depending on your oven.  I use the convection setting on my oven for baking granola.  If you don’t have convection on your oven, you may need to increase baking time by 5-10 minutes.  Spread the granola in the two baking sheets and set the timer for 10 minutes.  Remove from the oven and stir to combine the granola on the top that is starting to crisp, this keeps the granola from burning.  Place back in the oven for 5 minutes and then repeat until the baking time is finished.  Be sure to pay attention to the granola for the last 5-6 minutes as oven temperatures can vary and you don’t want to burn the granola.  You will know when the granola is cooked as it will no longer have a wet look, the oatmeal will be hardened and crunchy.  Remove from the oven and immediately place in the large bowl.  Stir to combine and then stir occasionally until completely cooled.  Place in an airtight container for storage.It’s cooled, and I add to a large mason jar.  Trust me when I tell you to wait until cooled before adding to a jar.  You don’t want it to harden in a solid piece in the jar 😉   The granola fills a large 1.9 litre jar is 1.9 and a small 500ml jar (approximately 10-11 cups).

Yes, I ate a bowlful immediately.  You will too.