Going Granola... Sorta...

Last summer, as you may recall, I talked about my favorite summer treat: a mug of brown sugar and oatmeal. (Yes, really. I wrote about it here.)

This summer, I thought it might be good to be just a little bit healthier in my snacking. (Especially after last week's Toll House pie.) But I still want it to be easy. So I was trying to think of other things I could have that would approximate my favorite mug o' comfort.

I decided that an entire market niche can't be completely wrong and headed down the granola route.

Not quite a mug o' goodness...

The thing that I quickly realized is that granola recipes are all kind of the same: You've got your healthy stuff, your other healthy stuff, your sweet things to kind of bind it, and maybe some salt. And then you bake it.

Let's look at how I made my choices:

NOTE: When warming the honey bear on the stove, do this in a water bath - not just straight on the stove or in a dry pan. You want the honey to melt, not the bear.

I'd like to point out that I do not love to make recipes up as I go along. I'm a recipe-follower. This was multiple steps out of my comfort zone for foods, as you might expect, but here's where I started:

Please ignore the Gluten-free pretzels at the back of this photo. There were no pretzels in my granola.

If there were a recipe for this, it might be:

1 1/2 c - oatmeal
1 1/2 c - pumpkin seeds
1 1/2 c - unsweetened coconut flakes
1/4 c - canola oil
1/4 c - maple syrup
1/4 c - honey
1 tsp - vanilla
1/2 tsp - salt
1 c - dried cherries
(SPOILER ALERT)
3/4 c - chocolate chunks

But, honestly, I can see how this could be endlessly modified. (Though I probably still wouldn't use pretzels.)

Before mixing - because I knew it wasn't going to take long - I preheated the oven to 350.

Then I started out with about 1 1/2 cups of each of the dry ingredients: oatmeal, pumpkin seeds, and unsweetened flake coconut.

Into this, I added 1/4 cup each of maple syrup, honey, and oil (canola, in this case), as well as about a teaspoon of vanilla and a half teaspoon of salt.

Have I mentioned that my honey is a little old? Luckily, honey doesn't go bad, so you just scrape it out and keep going. (Or you warm it, slowly, until it runs on its own.)

Dry stuff plus gloppy stuff. Yum. (?)

Once it was stirred, I spread it out on a cookie sheet that had been lined with a Silpat. (This could also have been done with parchment paper - or I guess I could probably have greased the pan - mainly, you just don't want to bake/scorch the sugars to the pan.)

Pre-oven, it looked a bit anemic.

At the halfway point (15 minutes in), I opened the oven (because the recipe said I was supposed to), stirred it all around (trying to flip it over as well), and then put it back in.

At about the 20-minute point, it was really starting to smell good in my kitchen. I should have taken that to mean it was almost done. But I'm a recipe-follower, so I left it in until the end of its second 15-minute baking. (If you're adding, this was 30 minutes, total.)

It was... a little darker than I'd hoped.

I added in about a cup of dried cherries (those are the big dark clumps in the photo, above), and stirred them around, then set it outside to cool and "crisp."

Later, outside with mug in hand, I did my taste test to see how it compares to my old standby:

I have no idea what's up with that one clump of hair that was sticking out in the back - for both videos.

Once it was fully cooled, I decided to be smart and portion this out. But - before doing that - I did add in some chocolate chunks. I'm not sure why, but they seem to help with the slightly-over-done taste of the granola (as well as just making it a little sweeter).

If you didn't already guess, the big rectangular chunks in there are the chocolate.

Overall, would I make it again? I'll give it a solid maybe. I mean... It's definitely better for me than the oatmeal/brown sugar/chocolate chip mix. But it's not quite as easy to just whip up and eat. I guess the snacking jury is still out on that one.

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What's the one snack you can't live without? Is it something from your childhood, or something that you found when you got older? I'd love to hear what it is - and why it's a favorite!