Molasses Granola

I am a huge fan of black strap molasses. I was running out of the little bit I've had for years because I've been baking with it a lot here recently. Today I found some at a local store real inexpensive and was very excited! Some of my favorite recipes with molasses will be made now. One of my favorites is homemade granola with molasses. Normally I use my favorite recipe, but today I wanted to share with you this recipe as well so that you could have variation.

Ingredients

6 cups oats

1/2 cup oil (vegetable or canola)

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 Tablespoons black strap molasses

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon almond extract

Additional

1 cup raisins

1 cup chopped or sliced nuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Put the oats in a large bowl.

3. In a sauce pan put the oil, water, sugar, molasses, vanilla, and almond. Put on medium (7-8) heat and bring to a boil.

4. If you want nuts in your granola then add them to the oats. If you are adding raisins, then wait until the end or they will be nasty.

5. Once the liquid mix comes to a boil, take it off the stove.

6. Pour the liquid over the oats. Stir until all the oats are coated well.

7. This will fill about three cookie sheets with a thin layer of granola. Make sure to grease the cookie sheets before pouring the granola mix on it.

8. Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. One pan on the bottom rack turned long ways, and two on the top rack.

9. Reduce the heat to 300 degrees and cook 10 more minutes.

10. Stir the granola. Take the pan from the bottom rack and put it on the top, put both the pans from the top rack and move them to the bottom. Bake 20 more minutes.

11. Remove from oven and let the granola cool.

12. Add in raisins before storing granola in an air tight container. I keep mine in the pantry.

Notes

~If you leave the granola in the oven at 350 degrees for more than 10 minutes then you will risk having a burnt flavor. Make sure to turn the oven down to 300 degrees right at 10 minutes.