When M and I went to Boulder in July, we stayed at a bed and breakfast called the Briar Rose. Upon arrival, we were greeted by a young man in his early twenties with long, messy hair and an extremely relaxed air. The smell in the kitchen was marvelous, and when we commented on it, he said, “I just baked some granola.” We chuckled to ourselves at the time, but each of the five days that we were there, we couldn’t get enough of the scrumptious homemade granola that was served every morning for breakfast with yogurt and fresh raspberries. It was crisp and deliciously chewy at the same time. On our last day there, one of the staff gave me the Briar Rose’s recipe.
I made it yesterday, altering it a bit – I cut the recipe to a third (since I’m not serving breakfast every day to 20 guests), I left out cashews and used both walnuts and pecans, doubled the amount of dried cranberries and left out the raisins, used one full teaspoon of vanilla and added a few pinches of cinnamon as well. Cutting the recipe into thirds gave me some odd fractions, like .41667 cup oil and the same of honey. I just poured both into the measuring cup about half way between 1/3 and ½ cup, but with the honey, I’d recommend a full half cup as I think the granola could use a little bit more sweetness. When baking, I found that putting the oven on Convect helped brown the granola evenly. My baking time was around 30 minutes, with stirring about every 10 minutes.
I had a bowl of it for breakfast this morning with fresh raspberries and yogurt from a NY state dairy, and it was divine – nutty and crisp, with the chewiness of the coconut perfecting the texture.
