Addictive Peanut Butter Granola

Hurray, an actual recipe!

If recipes were judged based on the number of times you make them, then this recipe gets five stars from me. I love it for many reasons: I can make it quickly from ingredients I have on hand, it is reasonably nutritious (especially for a sweet snack), it's satisfying, and most importantly, it's delicious! I adapted it from a now-lost recipe I found on allrecipes.com, so my kudos and apologies to the writer of the original granola bar recipe from whence my beloved peanut butter granola came.

I truly believe peanut butter and chocolate are a magical combination. When I was a child, my favorite candy of all was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Now that I am older and no longer live on candy, I eat this chocolate-studded granola in place of Peanut Butter Cups. I usually stir the granola into milk or plain yogurt and eat it alongside some fruit.

Addictive Peanut Butter Granola
4-6 servings

2 1/4 cups oats
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1/6 - 1/3 cup (or 3-5 tbsp.) vegetable oil (I usually just eyeball 1/6 of a cup by filling the 1/3 cup half full)
1/3 cup peanut butter, chunky or smooth as you prefer (I do like the texture chunky peanut butter gives the granola)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 of the following add-ins:
-1/2 cup mini chocolate chip morsels
-1 cup mixed peanut butter and chocolate morsels
-1 cup chocolate chips

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2) Mix together the oats, flour, and baking soda in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the vanilla extract.
3) Add the vegetable oil and peanut butter and mix. The mixture will be a bit chunky.
4) Stir in the brown sugar.
5) Stir in your chosen add-in. The mixture will be a bit moist from the oil and peanut butter, but overall it will be rather dry and chunky. Spoon the granola into a square 8-inch cake pan.
6) Bake the granola at 350 degrees for 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan, and then dig in! Before storing, allow granola to cool completely in the pan and then store it at room temperature in a tightly sealed container. This granola will keep for at least a week. My batches never last longer than that!

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Friday, November 28, 2008

A post-script

This granola recipe is a wildly popular hit when people search for peanut butter granola recipes via Google. I'm tickled to discover that there are so many people out there who are eager to make their own granola! This granola in particular is one of the easiest and most satisfying baking recipes in my collection; it hardly gets much easier than measure-stir-bake-eat. (That last part is my favorite.)

The popularity of this recipe nudged me into making it again after a long hiatus. Ooh-wee, I forgot how good this stuff is! It's too tasty for its own good, especially when you make it with Sunspire Peanut Butter Chips. Although I love chocolate as much as the next guy, I really like a straight peanut butter granola, which is my official recipe entry for Nick's celebration of Peanut Butter Lover's Month. I am hardly surprised that November is Peanut Butter Lover's Month; it seems apropos because November is my birthday month and I consider peanut butter essential for life. So to all my fellow peanut butter lovers, I raise my spoon to you in a sticky, peanut-buttery salute!

To make the all-peanut butter version of Addictive Peanut Butter Granola, I recommend using 1/2 cup of Sunspire Peanut Butter Chips as the add-in. The chips are pretty sweet, so if you are a little sensitive to sugar, you can decrease the brown sugar if you like. With the full 1/4 cup of brown sugar, the granola is pleasantly sweet to me when mixed with milk or plain yogurt.