Homemade Autumn Granola Recipe – $.48 Per Serving

 

Last week I made a whole 5 gallon bucket’s worth of delicious, crunchy, natural granola because there’s an upcoming fall festival and I’ll be selling this to the public. Fun!  But I’m absolutely going to make this much again for myself, vacuum seal it, and store it.

Why Make It Yourself?

Granola is actually a super easy thing to make. This particular recipe has a lot of ingredients and I made a crap ton of it, but it’s incredibly easy once you get a feel for it.

You have control over all the ingredients. Hate raisins and love dried cherries? Do it! Hate almonds and love sunflower seeds? Do it! No weird preservatives like the stuff you buy in the store too.

Ingredient list below ↓

Looking at the pile of ingredients, I had a feeling I would probably need to use something bigger than a normal mixing bowl. So I disinfected a 5 gallon bucket and dropped in the oats.

Side Note: I used some instant oats as well as old fashioned oats, but you can use one or the other if you’d like. The instant oats will help give you more clusters, if that’s your thing.

I purchased the nuts at an Indian store and it was quite a bit cheaper than grocery store prices, by the way. Put the nuts in a food processor and add to the oats. Leave some whole if you prefer.

 
Then drop the almonds in a food processor. You can leave them whole if you want, but I wanted them crushed up to help with the cluster formation.

 
Then drop the coconut in. I used unsweetened coconut powder, which is similar to what you find in the store, except that it’s much finer and not sweetened. Use whatever you can find.

  
Drop in the pumpkin seeds. I was hesitant to use the pumpkin seeds because I thought they might be too chewy, but once they’re cooked, they’re nice and crunchy. I also liked the salted kind, as it helped offset the sweetness of the sugar.

Drop in the sugar and other dry ingredients.

 
And mix.

 
Mix all of the liquids and spices in a bowl.

 
Then drop the liquids in with the dry ingredients and mix. I used my hands, cause that’s how I roll. Don’t put in the raisins yet. By the way, definitely use dried cherries if you can find them! I was too impatient to wait.

Make sure your oven is preheated to about 250*.

Take out a cookie sheet and line it with parchment paper. You can do it without it if you prefer, but a lot of forums highly recommended the paper.

Lay the granola out in a pan. If you made as much as I did, it can be a bit thicker in the pan. Otherwise, if you don’t have much of it, you can spread it out on a cookie sheet. It’ll cook faster that way.

You’ll be putting this in the oven and checking it every 15 minutes to STIR it. This is really important! Otherwise, the end parts will get too brown and the center parts will not be cooked enough.

Do this for roughly 45-60 minutes. Knowing when it’s done is a little tricky. But if you’ve stirred it 3-4 times, you’ll start to notice when the color is uniform all the way around.

AFTER the granola is out of the oven, sprinkle the raisins over top of it. If you cook the raisins, they’ll get too hard and gross. The end! Now serve as cereal, on top of yogurt, with dried fruit, or however you’d like.

Here are some bad iPhone photos from the packaging session. My friend let me use her Food Saver and I loved it!

First we made bags from the 8″ roll and filled each bag.

Then vacuum-packed them.

Ingredients

• 10 c. Instant Oats – $2.99
• 15 c. (or 1 42 oz. container) Old Fashioned Oats – $3.18
• 4 c. Chopped Walnuts – $6.99
• 6 c. Chopped Almonds – $7.50
• 3 c. Coconut Powder (or regular coconut) – $2.00
• 3 c. Wheat Germ – $3
• 2 c. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds – $5.38
• 1 lb. Bag of Brown Sugar – $1.99
• 2 Cans of Canned Pumpkin – $3.58
• 3 c. (1 24 oz. jar) Apple Sauce – $1.49
• 1 24 oz. Container Syrup – $2.09
• 4 c. Canola Oil – $1.80
• 1/2 c. Molasses – $.40
• 1/4 c. Nutmeg – $3.50
• 1/2 c. Cinnamon – $.20
• 1 T. Cardamon
• 5 T. Ginger (dried or fresh)
• 1/2 T. Cloves
• 4 T. Vanilla
• 2 t. Kosher Salt
• 14 oz. Golden Raisins – $2.49
• 14 oz. Dried Cranberries – $3.99
• Total – ~$52.57
• Made – 54 cups of final product / 108 servings (serving size: 1/2 cup)
• $.48 per serving