Sara's Seriously Scrumptious Cereal

Remember when granola was good? Before it became part of icky sticky granola bars with marshmallows and rice syrup as the first ingredient? Before it became hard-as-rock cereal that could break a molar with one chomp? Take that memory of yummy good granola and fly it to the moon and you have the results of this recipe. My friend Sara gave us a batch of this concoction, all cute-like in a Mason jar with the recipe tied around the lid. It lasted about 16.2 hours in our house. Granola for breakfast, lunch and dinner it was. But with the recipe in my hot little hand, I could exactly copy the wonderful flavor and enjoy it again and again! Because I had the recipe to faithfully follow to the letter.

Sara's Seriously Scrumptious Cereal 

1/3 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup shelled sunflower seeds
Vegetable oil cooking spray
2/3 cup maple syrup
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup unsweetened cranberry juice
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup chopped roasted and salted almonds
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsweetened dried cranberries

Oven to 350. Spread pumpkin and sunflower seeds on a baking sheet and toast lightly for 8 to 10 minutes. Cool. 

Reduce oven to 325. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.

In a small bowl combine maple syrup, honey, juice and cinnamon. In another bowl, mix oats, nuts, seeds and salt. Pour wet mixture into dry and stir.

Spread on baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes. Stir in the cranberries and bake an additional 10 to 15 minutes until brown but not too crispy. Let cool completely before storing.

A big pile of yumminess

Yumminess - baked and cooled.

Now comes the part where I say how I botched it and didn't follow the directions. I really tried to make it right, because Seriously Scrumptious Cereal should not be messed with. But we didn't have honey like I thought we did. I forgot to get the cranberry juice. We had walnuts not almonds and I think my cranberries were sweetened just a tad. Instead of the cranberry juice I put in some berry jam mixed with water. And I just had to add some chia and hemp mix - I love to say ch-ch-chia and I think the fact that we can eat hemp and make baskets from it should be celebrated. And I added more oats because that's a whole lot of maple syrup. Other than that, I stuck to the recipe faithfully. Except for not letting the seeds cool and forgetting to wait to put in the cranberries until the very end. And all my substitutions. Other than that...

I didn't botch it. This recipe is very forgiving, because even with all my changes, it was still one scrumptious tasting cereal. Thanks Sara - seriously!

My ramshackle list of ingredients

People food or birdseed, you be the judge.