Homemade Granola: The Formula for Healthy Granola

What I love most about a recipe is its ability to be customized according to what I have on hand and our favorite flavors. If a recipe has to be made exactly as is (like often in baking), I usually shy away from it. That’s probably what I love about making homemade granola – there really isn’t a wrong way to make it! However, there does seem to be general anatomy of the homemade granola. Like a formula, you can learn the basic rules and customize your homemade granola recipes to your family’s tastes! Use it to make homemade healthy snack bars using natural ingredients that your family will love every time. Use it to make a granola recipe without nuts or a super sweet honey granola bar recipe. Add extra dried fruit for homemade chewy granola bars. The possibilities are endless!

So instead of sharing an exact recipe for easy homemade granola bars, I thought it would be fun to create the formula to making granola at home! This list of homemade granola recipe ideas is meant for us to draw inspiration from so that you can make granola bars, low sugar granola or just a healthy granola recipe that your family loves best.

Homemade GranolaHealthy Granola Recipe

Grains: Most granola begins with oats, preferably old fashioned rolled oats. But, you can also use quick cooking oats, quinoa, buckwheat, muesli or varieties of rice puffed cereals.

Nuts: Pick your favorites, but for the integrity of the recipe, I would stick with 2-3 kinds of nuts max. I love walnuts, almonds, and pecans, but you can also use pistachios, peanuts, cashews, sunflower seeds, or macadamias. Buy nuts dry roasted to avoided any added fats, and be sure to chop very well or use a food processor (or just buy them chopped!).

Dried Fruit: Or not. Dried fruit isn’t mandatory in a homemade granola recipe, but I do love the sticky goodness of dried cranberries and blueberries. Other dried fruits to try are apricots, apple, golden raisin, mango, pineapple. Like the nuts, I suggest sticking to 2-3 kinds of dried fruit.

Related: Churro Cereal Bar Recipe

Flavorings: Extract (vanilla, almond, etc), spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, etc), ginger root or crystallized ginger, coconut flakes. Different kinds of chocolate chips are a favorite too and are great in homemade granola recipe ideas. Be sure to add a few pinches of salt to draw out the flavors!

Healthy Additions: Making homemade granola gives you the opportunity to combine nutrient dense additives like flax seed, nutritional yeast (or brewer’s yeast), wheat germ, protein powders, etc. I will likely play with our favorite green veggie powder, Vibrant Health’s Green Vibrance, in our next batch.

Sweeteners: This is the part that gets messy. Granola clumps best with loads of oils and sugars, but don’t feel like you have to drench your recipe in them. You can use brown sugar for sweetness, but also popular are: honey, syrup (maple or fruit flavored), black molasses, agave (my personal favorite). Oils help to keep the granola moist, such as vegetable, olive or coconut oil. My next bath I plan to use apple sauce as the sweetener. After you’ve mixed the above ingredients, make sure everything is evenly coated and wet.

Relate: Sweet Potato Oatmeal

Homemade Granola Bars

Spread your homemade granola out thinly and cook in a 300-degree oven, stirring and shifting the pan often. Cooking homemade granola takes patience and attention. Although yummy, I probably left this batch in a few minutes too long. Let cool completely before serving or storing in an airtight container.

This was a great recipe to make with your kids. Alina had a blast learning about different nuts and how (or why) fruit is dried. That concept really fascinated her for some reason. We ate it as shown, with yogurt and fruit, and I’ve enjoyed it every day since as a bowl of cereal.

I love knowing exactly what is in my granola recipe!

Have you made homemade granola before? What flavor combinations should we try next?