Granola

This granola was something I made a few times in the week or two before Reese's arrival.  I was fully anticipating her coming anytime and wanted to have something on hand that would make for a quick healthy snack.  Then I just got addicted and couldn't stop making it!  I've tried making granola a few times before but always ended up burning it.  I cooked this slowly at a low temperature and checked it every 5 minutes to make sure that didn't happen.  This stuff is so good I had a hard time keeping myself from grabbing handfuls of it out of the tupperware.

Slightly adapted from Tasty Kitchen

3 cups Old Fashion Oats
3/4 cups Almond, Roughly Chopped
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 stick Unsalted Butter
1/4 cups Honey (or Agave Nectar)
2/3 cups Brown Sugar
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract


Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.  In a large bowl, combine the oats, almonds, salt and cinnamon and set aside.  In a medium saucepan, melt the butter, honey and brown sugar until the sugar has completely dissolved.  Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract.  Pour the butter mixture over the oat mixture and stir to combine until everything is well coated.  Spread the granola mixture onto a baking sheet, leaving a few large clumps.

Bake the granola for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and break up the pieces to ensure even baking.  Place the baking sheet back into the oven for another 5 minutes.  Remove the sheet pan from the oven and give it one more toss to break up some of the pieces and place back into the oven for another 5emove the baking sheet from the oven and let it cool completely.  It gets much crunchier as it cools, so you can then decide if you need to cook it longer.  Store in air tight tupperware container.