Chocolate Cherry Chunk Granola
Have you ever had a food obsession that just wouldn’t let go? For me, a decadent, prepackaged chocolate granola that seems to cost as much as my utility bills. But I'm a big fan of breakfast that moonlights as dessert, so as decadent as chocolate for breakfast might sound I still wanted to figure out how to make it myself. To achieve the large clusters I'm so fond of, I found that baking the granola tightly packed in a baking dish - rather than the more traditional method of spreading it out in a single layer on a sheet pan - works best.
Chocolate Cherry Chunk Granola
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Ingredients
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3 cups rolled oats
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1 cup slivered almonds
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½ cup shredded or flaked coconut
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¾ cups pumpkin seeds
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¼ cup cocoa powder
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¼ cup coconut oil
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½ cup maple syrup
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1 cup dried tart cherries
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¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Directions
Preheat your oven to 350º. Lightly grease a 9x13” baking dish and line the bottom with parchment paper so that the parchment overhangs by about an inch on the shorter sides.
Toss the oatmeal, almonds and coconut together on a ½ sheet pan and bake for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lightly brown.
Combine the oat mixture, cocoa powder, coconut oil, maple syrup, kosher salt, and cherries in a bowl and stir well. Reduce the oven temperature to 300º. Pour the mixture into your prepared baking dish and press, firmly, until the mixture is packed as tightly as possible. Wet fingers or a silicone spatula work well for this.
Bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the flaky sea salt. Cool in the pan for 2-3 hours.
Once cool, break the granola up into chunks. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.