Easy, Healthy Maple Granola

This recipe, from the recently published cookbook of one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, is brilliant - granola that has clumps that stick together with the help of egg white. It's also not filled with extra sugary stuff that you find in many store-bought granolas. And it's really easy - makes a nice, slightly sweet granola that you can enjoy by itself, with milk or with yogurt (as in the parfait pictured here, which my daughter and I made together - just layer yogurt with granola and fruit). I adapted it slightly from the original - didn't have wheat germ so I used flaxseed, used sweetened coconut - but you could adapt based on what you have on hand and probably wouldn't go wrong.






Smitten Kitchen Maple Granola

3 cups rolled oats
1 cup shredded coconut (I used sweetened)
1 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup flaxseed
2 Tblsp olive oil
1/2 tsp. coarse salt
1/2 to 3/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 egg white
1 1/2 cup dried fruit - raisins, cranberries, etc


Preheat oven to 300 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix together everything except egg white and dried fruit. Whisk egg white until bubbly, then stir into granola. Spread onto baking sheet, bake 20 minutes, then turn over granola with a spatula, keeping together big chunks. Bake another 20-25 minutes, checking to see when it's golden brown. Take out, cool completely, then add dried fruit. Store at room temperature.