Gluten Free Granola

April 5, 2008

With 3 gluten sensitive members in our family I haven't made granola for years. After all what do you put in granola if you can't use oats? Lots apparently. I finally got tired of missing it and searched for a recipe last week, made some modifications and came up with this. The batch is large because with homemade granola a bigger batch is always better.

Dry Ingredients

3 cups gluten free flours (see gluten free pancake recipe for my flour mix)
1 cup potato starch
1 cup raw pumpkin seeds
1 cup sunflower seeds
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1/2 cup raw almonds, chopped
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup peanuts
1/2 cup raw cashew pieces
1/4 cup flax seeds
2 tsp. cinnamon

Wet Ingredients

4 ripe bananas
1/2 cup honey or maple sryup, OR 1 cup dates, pitted
1/3 cup tahini
1/3 cup natural peanut butter
1 lemon, juiced
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
1-2 cups dried fruit, optional

Method

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Mix dry ingredients in large bowl. Blend liquid ingredients in blender.
Mix liquid ingredients into dry. This will take a little work and will involve your hands, kind of like kneading bread dough.
When mixture is thoroughly mixed and clumping together spread it evenly on 2 greased or non-stick baking sheets. You'll probably need to use your hands again.
Bake for a total of 45-60 minutes, until golden brown. Stir every 10 minutes. The first couple of times you stir you need to break up the mixture using a flat plastic flipper, wooden spoon or pastry blender to break the large flat chunk into smaller chunks.
Let cool and stir in dried fruit if using.

Serve with milk or yogurt (dairy or non-dairy).

Notes

Gluten Free Flours, you could also try buckwheat, brown rice flour, amaranth and teff.
If you are using dates as your sweetener you will need a powerful blender to blend all the liquid ingredients.
You can use thawed frozen bananas. Also could use 1 1/2 - 2 cups of applesauce.