Our Favorite Coconut Oil Granola
But seriously, you guys, it’s so so so good.
There is no other name for this besides OUR FAVORITE coconut oil granola. My favorite, Bjork’s favorite, my friends’ favorite, our neighbors’ favorite.
It’s a deliciously golden, rustic-feeling medley of oats, pecans, golden raisins, pistachios, and chia seeds coated with coconut oil honey cinnamon and baked to crunchy cluster perfection. So much to love, it’s almost hard to talk about. ♡
It makes the house smell like cinnamon heaven, and it elicits compliments from spouses like whoa, and it makes breakfast enough of an event to wake up at First Alarm. FIRST ALARM, guys. Not that I’d ever snooze or anything, but just saying, for those of you who do. Ahem.
Normally I don’t consider myself much of a granola girl in either the adjective sense or the food-I-like-to-eat sense. I typically set aside three times a year to eat granola:
- At the cabin in the summer, when my parents make the world’s largest batch of granola and we all sit out on the dock with sweatshirts and coffee and little bowls of fresh raspberries and granola and watch the sun rise over the lake. SUMMER COME BAAAACK.
- Around Christmas time, when I’m trying to figure out what to give my neighbors and friends, and large batches of granola in jars with a ribbon around the top are suddenly the cutest, most giftable thing ever.
- During the whole month of January when I make at least 600 batches of coconut oil granola to “test the recipe.”
I feel like the three times a year granola pattern is about to change. Would daily granola snackage be too much to ask for?
During my 60 day sugar free challenge, I’ve tried to stay away from baking because it’s usually just a set up for something that used to be really good to become really, really bad (unsweetened quinoa cake). –> See Fails. But granola is one of those things that makes me feel cozy, like I’m baking something sweet and yummy, even though it’s mostly like baking marathon runner’s health food. So when the feeling strikes and I need to get out the mixing bowls and lick something delicious off wooden spoons, granola it is.
I originally made this recipe on a whim: late night, watching State of Affairs on Hulu, needing a snack. What else is new tho?
It was completely without a recipe, just sort of eyeballing the measurements, thinking we’d end up with something good enough to eat over yogurt and fruit. Uhmmm yeah. It was absolutely the best granola I had ever made, and of course, OF COURSE, I hadn’t measured one single thing.
Over the course of the next 587 granola batches, I tried to recreate the not-measured recipe, and oh happiest day! I think I’ve finally gotten it. I rarely “develop recipes” where I make them a bajillion times to get them just right – I’m the type of person who would rather scrap the whole thing after two tries rather than continue perfecting a recipe. I think they call it the opposite of patient? I’ve been this way for some time now.
But this coconut oil granola was worth fighting for as evidenced by the year’s worth of various batches of granola we have sitting in jars in our cabinets right now. Which is sort of the best thing ever.
At the risk of being annoying and saying the same things forever, this is OUR FAVORITE coconut oil granola. When you make it, it’ll be like we’re eating breakfast together because that’s how much we love it. Or wait, does that make it better or worse?
Happy weekend, all you granola-ers!
Print Our Favorite Coconut Oil Granola
Author: Pinch of Yum Serves: 12 (about a half cup per serving)
Ingredients Dry Ingredients
- 3 cups rolled oats
- 1 heaping cup pecans, chopped roughly
- ½ to ¾ cup pistachios, chopped roughly
- ½ cup white whole wheat flour
- ¼ cup chia seeds
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup golden raisins
- ¾ cup melted coconut oil
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 2 tablespoons real maple syrup
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Mix all the dry ingredients together (except the raisins - set aside for later). Whisk the wet ingredients until smooth. Combine the wet and the dry ingredients in a large bowl until the mixture is moistened.
- Spread the mixture on the baking sheet in a thin layer (use two pans if necessary - I just use one 10x15 jelly roll pan).
- Bake for one hour, stirring every 20 minutes. During the last 20 minutes of baking, stir in the golden raisins. When you remove the granola from the oven at the end, don't stir it right away - the granola will form crunchy clusters as it cools. Yum!
Notes I made a few batches on parchment paper but I didn't like how those turned out with the oil sort of absorbing into the paper. If you have a nonstick baking sheet, I'd recommend going without parchment paper.
This recipe is not as good when you reduce the coconut oil. I tried making this recipe with about ½ cup coconut oil and it seemed really dry to me.
Be careful with the nuts! If you pulse them in a food processor and they get too fine, they'll make the granola dry because it almost acts like a flour. I recommend just roughly chopping or barely running them through your processor.
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