Blueberry Almond Granola

Little Bear's at noon Mass with Grandma, Kit is napping, and I'm all caught up on the non-noisy items on my to-do list, so here's a quick recipe!

Kit helped me mix up a batch of our current favorite granola this morning: with blueberries, whole grains, and coconut, it has something for everyone in our family! It's dairy-free, and easily gluten-free as well.

Blueberry Almond Granola

3 cups seven-grain cereal blend (or rolled oats, gluten-free if necessary)
3 1/2 cups almonds, chopped
1 Tablespoon sugar (I use evaporated cane sugar, but brown sugar or coconut sugar would also be good)
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 Tablespoons coconut oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup desiccated coconut (not the sweetened kind), divided
2 cups freeze-dried blueberries

Preheat the oven to 340 degrees F. In a large bowl, mix together seven-grain cereal, almonds, sugar, and salt. In a small pot over medium heat, combine coconut oil, maple syrup, and vanilla. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the coconut oil is melted. Pour liquids over dry ingredients, stir until it's all thoroughly moistened, and spread the mixture over two ungreased, unlined sheet pans.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove pans from oven, and stir 1/2 cup of coconut into each pan. Return to oven, rotating pans so that the one that was on the upper shelf is now on the lower, and bake about more 5 minutes, until the coconut is turning golden. Allow the granola to cool completely before stirring in the blueberries. I've found that it works best to pour the granola off both pans into the (cleaned) bowl I mixed it all together in, add the blueberries, and stir it up again in there rather than trying to stir in the blueberries on the pans.

(Recipe adapted from Minimalist Baker's Strawberry Coconut Granola, which also looks delicious, but no one in town carries freeze-dried strawberries so I haven't been able to give it a try!)


I started using seven-grain cereal in all of my granolas because I had a 50-lb bucket of it that we weren't going through quickly enough as hot cereal, but we've discovered that we really like the variety of flavors and textures that it adds to the granola; the last oat-only granola I tried tasted kind of boring in comparison! We use a blend of wheat, rye, oats, triticale, barley, spelt, and flax.