Healthy Peanut Butter Honey Granola

As the weather is getting warmer my breakfast tastes are moving away from my many oatmeal loves towards something a little – well, cooler.

I’ve always been a cereal fan but I have been on a great kick lately of incorporating healthy fats and proteins in my diet and cereal only tends to give me … well, carbs.

So in the spirit of keeping my good ol’ macronutrient balance on the right track, I set about with the task of making a healthy granola.

To many people just the word granola indicates health. But they could not be more wrong. Most regular granolas you buy at the store are:

• High in calories
• Loaded with sugar
• Loaded with fat
• Weak in protein and high in simple carbohydrates

This does not a healthy breakfast make!

Copyright to The Guiltless Life

I think I achieved my goal (with major thanks to Katie, whose granola bar recipe inspired and helped me to come up with this granola!), as this granola offers:

• Under 150 calories per serving
• Naturally sweetened with low-GI sweeteners
• Just 4g fat per serving but it’s all healthy fat, courtesy of the peanut butter (you can use any nut butter or nut butter replacement you like)
• Nearly 6g of protein per 1/2 cup serving. I have mine on top of nonfat Greek yogurt for a real protein kick!

So here we go…

Copyright to The Guiltless Life

Healthy Peanut Butter Honey Granola (adapted from Katie’s Homemade FIT Granola bars recipe)

INGREDIENTS (makes 12 1/2 cup servings):

1 1/2 cups Rice Krispies gluten-free brown rice cereal or other puffed grain cereal
1 1/2 cups Kashi GoLean cereal, or All-Bran twigs (Kashi GoLean is high in protein, so replacing it may change the protein count slightly)
1 cup rolled oats
1 scoop (about 5 tbsp) vanilla protein powder
1/4 cup agave nectar
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon

DIRECTIONS:

1. If you want your granola a little more ground up, place the oats and cereals into a large Ziploc bag and bash with your fist or a rolling pin until they’re a bit more crushed. If you don’t mind chunkier granola, skip this step.

2. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Pour the cereals and oats into a large mixing bowl and add the protein powder.

3. Heat the peanut butter slightly in the microwave to soften, then add the agave, honey and peanut butter to the bowl. Sprinkle over the coconut, salt and cinnamon and combine, using a spatula, your hands, a spoon – whatever works!

4. Grease a square cooking dish with oil or cooking spray and pour mixture into the dish. You can press it down slightly if you want to, just to level out the mixture.

5. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden on top. Bring it out of the oven and let cool for another 10-15 minutes. Cut out squares and, using your hands, crumble gently into a Tupperware container or mason jar for storage. Mine still maintained some clusters but otherwise crumbled. Depending on how loose you like your granola, you can crumble it more or less.

6. Serve with milk, Greek yogurt, on top of a smoothie – however you like! Enjoy!

Note: You can add in dried fruit and nuts too, but it will affect the nutritional information shown below. You can also omit the protein powder without making any other changes to the recipe.

Copyright to The Guiltless Life

Nutritional information below is per 1/2 cup serving. This recipe makes 12:

Nutritional information courtesy of caloriecount.about.com