I have always had a love/hate relationship with granola.  You see, I love to eat granola, but I am often put off by the extremely high-fat, high calorie granola that comes with the itty bitty service size.  Some different brands of granola I have tried have as much as 10-12 grams of fat per serving.  I love chocolate far too much to be wasting those fat calories on granola so I passed on granola for ages, until now.

I feel like the skies cleared once I started making this recipe.  It is so flipping good.  One of the main things I love about this recipe is how versatile it is.  The base includes oats, crisp rice cereal, coconut oil and either maple syrup or maple flavored agave syrup (I am sure that honey would taste delicious here as well.)  All the other ingredients can be included, excluded and/or swapped out based on what you have on hand.  I included chia seeds and hemp harts in this granola recipe due to their nutritional benefits.  However, if you don’t have those ingredients, by all means leave one or both of them out.  Same goes for the almonds.  You may also notice that I have excluded dry fruit from this recipe.  I did this because I actually prefer to enjoy this granola with fresh fruit and I find dried fruit to be extremely calorie dense and overly sweet.

One last testament to how yummy this stuff is – even my coconut hating, picky little eaters love it.  I see them grab this as an afternoon snack to munch on over chips.  I felt like doing the moonwalk across the kitchen!  I did control myself because I didn’t want them seeing how excited I actually was in fear they would realize it was actually good for them.  🙂

I hope you try this recipe out and let me know what you think!

Gluten Free & Vegan Granola
Ingredients
1 c. gluten free oats
2 c. rice krispies
½ t. salt
¼ c. sliced almonds (optional)
2 T. raw shelled hemp seeds (optional)
1 T. chia seeds
1 T. organic coconut oil, melted
5 T. maple syrup or maple agave syrup blend

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Place all dry ingredients in a bowl.  Melt coconut oil and add maple syrup/agave to bowl.  Pour over dry ingredients.  Gently fold oil/syrup mixture into dry ingredients and spread out onto a sheet pan covered in parchment paper.    Spread granola onto sheet pan in a thin layer.  Back for 325 degrees for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Note that when you first take the granola out of the oven it won’t feel crisp. Let the mixture cool and store in tupperware.  Serve over milk, with fruit, ice cream or just munch on it!