Granola

I made amazing granola with a recipe that I adapted from the book Homemad Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making by Alana Chernila. First let me say how very much I loved this book.  Seriously the recipes were great and the stories behind each one were even better.

I have wanted to make granola for years, I don't know why it always sounded like a fun time.  So finally I decided to go to the store and gather the things I needed.  It was time.

The great thing about granola is that you can literally put just about anything you want in it and it will still turn out amazing.  The recipe from Homemade Pantry called for sesame seeds, I couldnt find any at the store so out they went and I think it tasted amazing still. The original recipe also called for unsweetened shredded coconut and since I had sweetened on hand that just had to do. 

Here is my modified recipe:

 - 10 cups old fashioned rolled oats
 - 1/2 cup sunflower seeds
 - 2 cups sliced almonds
 - 1 cup shredded coconut
 - 1 1/2 T ground cinamon
 - 1/2 t salt
 - 3/4 C canola oil
 - 1 cup syrup
 - 1 1/2 T homemade vanilla extract (its easy to make, find the post here)


       - Preheat oven to 250
       - Mix together all dry ingredients in a LARGE bowl.  Seriously 10 cups of rolled oats is alot
       - In a smaller bowl mix together the wet ingriedents.
       - Pour the smaller bowl into the LARGE one and mix together so that there are no pockets of dry or wet.
        - Line two cookie sheets with parchment or wax paper.  Parchment works better but we only had wax paper and that worked just fine.
        - Bake at 250 for 30 minutes, stir and rotate the sheets.  Bake another 30 minutes, stir and rotate again.  Bake for 30 more minutes for a total of 90 minutes of baking time.
         - Enjoy and try not to eat it all in one sitting.  Trust me it will be hard.

The dry ingredients:

The wet ingridents, it was hard to mix oil and syrup together to get them to combine right. 

Everything combined together:

The very yummy finished product:

See how easy it is to make your own? Its like stew just start dumping stuff in from your pantry. Its bound to be good.

Linked at: Six Sister's Stuff,, The Prudent Pantry

Homemade Vanilla Extract

There is nothing easier in the world than making vanilla extract.  Seriously once you see how easy it is you will never buy it again.  It involves very few ingredients and takes almost no time to assemble. Here is what you need:

 - A clean jar with a lid (I used an old Rose's jar because I liked the embossing)
 - 3 whole vanilla beans (tip buy them at Cost Plus if you have one they are cheap there)
 - 1 cup Vodka (the cheaper the better)

Split the vanilla beans down the center and scrape out the vanilla.  Add the scrapings and beans to the jar. Pour in the vodka.  Put the lid on and give it a good shake.  Now is the longest part of the process let sit in a cool dark place for 6 to 8 weeks. The longer it sits the stronger it will be.  That's it now you have vanilla extract for all of your baking needs.  And if you run low just add more vodka to the bottle and let it sit again. 

Here is my extract after I added more vodka.  It will need to sit for a couple of weeks until I can use it again but you can see it already has that beautiful carmel color. 

Oh and we will all pretend that I actually removed all of the label from the original bottle. Linked up at: