During the last two years as an undergraduate in college, I started making batches of homemade granola to snack on throughout the week. I’d grab a small handful before heading out the door to bike to campus in the mornings, another handful when I arrived home in the afternoons, and a few more bites to nibble on while cooking dinner and just before bed.
Those batches barely lasted me an entire week… I just couldn’t resist those big crunchy clusters!
So once a week, usually on Saturday afternoons, I’d head into my kitchen to throw together a fresh batch of my homemade granola. I’d add the spices, a little oil, some water, and a generous splash of liquid sweetener (usually maple syrup or honey!) to a pot, reduce it down on the stovetop, and pour the bubbling hot thickened syrup all over my cereals, gently stirring with a spatula until everything was evenly coated.
Yes, cereals… As in plural. I loved mixing together multiple types, not just oats! As the bare minimum, I always included crisp rice cereal because it added such an irresistible crunch (for far fewer calories than extra oil!). Occasionally, I played around with folding in a few shakes of Grape Nuts or Fiber One for even more interesting crunchy textures and fun flavors.
As a chemistry student, I definitely loved experimenting in my kitchen “lab!”
Once I poured my big bowl of fully coated cereals into a cake pan, I slid that in the oven, set a timer, and started working on problem sets or lab reports while it baked. Every so often, when the buzzer dinged, I hopped up and pulled out the pan to gently stir the granola so it’d cook evenly without burning, and each time, I felt more and more tempted to sneak a taste as I smelled the cozy cinnamon aroma escaping from the oven… Even if it meant burning my tongue in the process!
An hour or so later, the pan sat cooling on my countertop, and once it reached room temperature, I’d scatter a generous showering of raisins over the top before pouring it into a glass jar for storing… But first, I set aside a small ramekin of the freshly baked granola for snacking while I finished my homework!
Eventually, I realized that I could try baking a double batch of granola to save some time on the weekends, especially because making the syrup mixture on the stovetop could take a bit of time — and lots of careful attention! — along with keeping an eye on the granola in the oven so it wouldn’t burn. I reasoned that a double batch would last me twice as long, two weeks instead of the usual one, so I grabbed a bigger pan and doubled all of the ingredients…
Yet somehow, that double batch still only lasted a week. Apparently, that just meant I’d be twice as tempted — and polish off twice as much granola in half the time!
Oops.
And now, far too many years later, I decided to try a different approach… Create a healthy homemade granola recipe that’s much easier and quicker to make!
So that’s exactly what I did with this Healthy One-Bowl Peanut Butter Granola! You just need 5 ingredients to make it, and you don’t have to cook a single thing on the stove. You literally just need one bowl and 5 minutes to throw everything together, and because of a special semi-secret baking trick, your granola finishes baking in almost half the time!
Even better? That baking trick yields the biggest and crunchiest clusters imaginable… Even with no butter, oil or refined sugar. These crunchy clusters are massive — so big that I always have to break them up so that they’ll actually fit on my spoon to eat for breakfast! 
And each bowl of this healthy homemade peanut butter granola is 108 calories!
Continue reading & see the rest! ›› Healthy One-Bowl Peanut Butter Granola {5-Ingredient Recipe!}
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