Homemade Granola Cereal

Cereal is almost everyone’s go-to breakfast, and for good reason. Being able to pour breakfast into a bowl, add milk, and eat it in a matter of a minutes is something that can’t be passed up. Clean up is even a snap! I understand the convenience of cereal, but what I know about the ingredients and it’s high-sugar content deters me from them.

So instead of buying cereal or even granola cereal (Kashi), I make my own. It’s so easy, and I honestly don’t understand why more people don’t make it themselves. It usually takes me less than half an hour to whip out a batch of granola and then it takes 10 minutes for the granola to cool and be put away. It’s a simple process: (1) Mix together all dry ingredients (2) Pour the honey and oil mixture over the granola and stir (3) Put granola on pan and bake then cool.

This is the best homemade granola out there. It is super delicious and easy to make. Anything you could add into trail mix, you could add in here. After trying a few different granola recipes that didn’t deliver, I’ve settled on this one.

First things first, get a bowl. I used a medium sized bowl today, an it was a little too small, so I recommend a large bowl.

Pour old fashioned or quick oats in medium sized bowl. I prefer old fashioned because the individual oats are still intact, but I assume you could use quick oats and the results would be similar.

And the pumpkin seeds. I used home-roasted pumpkin seeds just because I didn’t have any pepitas (raw pumpkin seeds) on hand. I would have liked to have used pepitas because when I bake the granola, it goes through it’s own roasting process where it roasts in honey and coconut goodness. But it tastes good either way.

Add the sesame seeds. If you don’t have a whole cup of sesame seeds, you can just use what you have. I only had 1/2 cup for today’s batch and it was still insanely delicious.

Now add some sunflower seeds. It’s okay if all you have is roasted, salted. I’ve made homemade granola about 40 times before and sometimes I have the raw kind and sometimes I don’t. But I try not to worry about it too much…

Next up, add the flax seed. You can use ground flax seeds or the whole ones. I like ‘em either way.

The coconut is completely optional, as are most of the other ingredients. I use unsweetened shredded coconut. I like the flavor that it gives teh granola, so I add it if I have it. Badda bing badda boom.

I like orange juice.

Moving on.

I like to add chia seeds to mine because they are a super food and I just love ‘em to death, but if ya don’t got ‘em, don’t add ‘em.

Now stir it all together, trying not to spill it all over the table if you used a medium-sized bowl (like me ).

Keep stirring until it’s all good and combined.

In a small saucepan, heat together the oil, honey, and extract of choice. I used vanilla. Remember when pouring the honey mixture into the bowl, try to pour it over the whole top of the oat mixture.

Make sure you evenly distribute the honey mixture, otherwise some parts of the granola will end up stuck together. And I mean really stuck together. Stir it all together.

Plop half of the granola onto a large baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper. Wax paper and foil simply will not work. Do the same for the other half of the granola.

Now spread it all over the pan evenly so that it cooks even and everything’s all even because I want to get even with…

I’m so glad we had this talk.

If you liked this recipe, check out similar ones on my breakfast board!