No Fuss Generic Granola Recipe

I have poured over a lot of different granola recipes on the 3dub. (That's a totally dorky way of saying internet, that my coworker at MIT is trying to coin. Josh, I am trying to help!). Since my motivation for making granola is financial, I also tried to eliminate the ones that wouldn't save money. My husband eats box cereal like there's no tomorrow. And he has definite preferences as to brands and kinds.... so I need to make the granola enticing enough that he'd eat it. This was successfully accomplished by the addition of chocolate chips. I consider myself a genius for coming up with this, since it wasn't on any of the internet recipes I saw!


Here's my 'formula' that I use with great success.

Mix in very large bowl:

10 cups organic oldfashioned rolled oats (buy in bulk at Whole Foods)
2 cups small things (e.g. sesame seeds, ground flax meal, wheat or oat bran, wheat germ)
2 cups nutty things (e.g. chopped walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, slivered almonds)

Mix in smaller bowl:

1 cup water
3/4 cup molasses (or Maple Syrup or Honey but it's less healthy and more expensive)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup canola oil
2 Tbsp Vanilla
2 Tbsp Cinnamon

Pour liquids over dry ingredients and stir well. Spread this in two of those large 'disposable' aluminum lasagna trays. I do reuse them many times, btw, you can wash them just fine.

Bake at 330F, for 20 minutes, stir, 10 minutes, stir, 10 minutes, stir and take out.
Let it cool down about 2/3 of the way. This is somewhat critical. Now you add
1 cup of chocolate chips to each tray, as well as 1 cup of cranberries (I am sure you could use raisins, I just don't like them). Stir. If you do this right, the chocolate will melt ever so slightly. The darker the chocolate, the warmer the granola should be when you add it. I.e. wait long for white chocolate which is my favorite. It appears to melt at a lower temperature than the darker kinds.

Let cool all the way, stir again, and store in airtight container. I have no idea how long it could last - in my pantry it's gone after a week, tops.

You can make your own yogurt parfait with this, which I like to do at work. Those cups of yogurt and granola are like $4 at Starbucks and the likes!!!