Pumpkin Granola

We've been on a granola kick at my house lately. It goes in yogurt, gets mixed into cereal, poured onto ice cream, and I've even caught some members of my family eating it straight out of the container.  When I have time, I try to make a large batch of granola about every other weekend. That's usually enough to get us through two weeks of granola obsession.

I know I already posted The Girl's favorite recipe for granola. But when I saw Gina's recipe for Pumpkin Granola on www.skinnytaste.com I knew we had to give it a try. We like granola; we like pumpkin. It seemed like a match made in heaven! I was also intrigued by Gina's addition of quinoa to the mix, and wanted to check it out.

Did you know that the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has officially declared that the year 2013 be recognized as "The International Year of the Quinoa"? Quinoa has amazing nutritional value. It has antioxidants, anti-inflammatory properties, and a high protein content. I've read a lot about quinoa, but haven't really done much with it. Going forward, I'm going to try to be much more intentional about learning how to incorporate more quinoa into our diets.

Okay, enough about that, let's get on to the good stuff.

After some minor adjustments to Gina's recipe, here's the list of ingredients I used:

• 1/4 cup uncooked quinoa, rinsed well and pat dry with paper towel
• 1 1/2 cups old fashioned outs
• 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup shelled pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup sliced almonds
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 tablespoon applesauce or apple butter (optional but I like the "appley" notes it adds to the recipe)
• 1 tsp oil 
• 1 tsp pumpkin spice
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• pinch kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup dried cranberries or cherries.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Spread oats and quinoa out on a parchment lined baking pan. Toast in the oven 10 minutes, stirring once.  I had my doubts that the toasting of the oats would make a difference. We'd not done that before with our other granola recipe, but I will do it that way from now on. It makes things so, I don't know, "toasty."

Remove oats and quinoa and toss into a bowl with the seeds and nuts. Reduce heat to 300 degrees. Reduce it! Trust me - I didn't do this and things got a little brown faster than I had planned.

On the stovetop, combine honey, pumpkin, applesauce, oil, spices and vanilla. Stir everything until combined well and bring just to a boil. Remove from heat.

Pour the warmed ingredients over the oat mixture and stir just until combined. Spread mixture in the sheet pan, and heat in the oven for about 20 minutes. It should look toasted and golden.  I usually check it about every ten minutes and give it a stir to make sure things are toasting evenly.

After you take the pan out of the over, you can sprinkle the cranberries over the mixture. Other recipes have you add the dried cranberries in the beginning with the seeds and nuts. In my experience, that dries out fruit that has already been dried. So I always add it at the end.

Here's the closeup. Doesn't that look yummy? I honestly had my doubts about the quinoa but it really works. And the toasting seems to take it to a whole new level. The only down side we've found is that the quinoa tends to settle to the bottom of the container. So when you're serving it up, you might want to give your container a gentle shake to bring some of it back up to the top.

My favorite way to eat this particular granola is stirred into Apple Cinnamon Chobani Greek yogurt. It works with any yogurt, but that's my personal favorite. And, for the record, I made a batch of this a few days ago with my six year old niece, and it got her stamp of approval. She was a little skeptical about the quinoa too, but she liked the end result.

Big thanks to Gina at Skinnytaste for this recipe. Her website is a constant source of inspiration for me. I want her to adopt me. I want to live at her house. I want her to cook for me everyday. Until that happens, I'll just have to settle for cyber-stalking her recipes.

Let me know how it turns out for you. Enjoy!