I love granola.  For breakfast, for snack, and with enough chocolate chips, even for dessert.  But I change my mind a lot when it comes to granola.  Sometimes I want it extra chocolate-y, sometimes I want it full of fruit and nuts.  Sometimes I like a kick of ginger to my granola, and that just doesn’t mix well with peanut butter chips.  So I needed a granola recipe that I could easily customize depending on my mood and chocolate cravings.

I decided to just make a very simple base granola recipe and add mix-ins later based on whatever I felt like.  This bowl has craisins and cacao nibs mixed into the base granola.

Other possible mix-ins I rustled up in my kitchen include dark chocolate wafers, peanut butter chips, and crystallized ginger.  But get creative!  Any dried fruit or nut is pretty much fair game, and I think some dark chocolate or coconut M&Ms would make for a sweet and colorful twist.

Simple, Customizable Granola Recipe

• 1/2 cup roughly chopped nuts (I used a mix of almonds and walnuts)
• 2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
• 2 tbsp shelled hemp seed (or any other type of seed you want to substitute)
• 1/2 cup sweetened coconut
• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 1 tbsp safflower oil
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl mix together the nuts, oats, seeds, and coconut. 
3. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, safflower oil and sea salt.
4. Pour the wet mixture over the dry ingredients and mix together.
5. Pour the granola onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 20-25 min.
6. After 10 min of baking, stir the mixture to allow it to brown evenly.
7. When the granola is golden and smells delicious (really, your nose will know), pull it out of the oven and allow to cool. 
8. At this point you can stir in mix-ins for the whole batch, or you can store the granola and add different mix-ins every time you eat it.

What flavors do you like in your granola?