Granola

I first discovered granola my senior year of high school. My mother would buy me a pound of vanilla granola at the grocery store, and I'd eagerly chow down on it, mixing it into containers of fruit-flavored Yoplait yogurt and feeling pleased with myself for snacking on such a "healthy" combination. Since then my tastes have changed slightly- now I don't like my granola to be so overwhelmingly sweet, and I eat it with Fage yogurt instead of Yoplait- but the basic combination is basically the same, albeit with about 30 less grams of sugar.

My best friend and I first made granola from scratch this summer, and since then I've refused to buy granola from the store. It's so much more delicious and cheap when it's home-made, not to mention it's so easy to make! The other great thing about making granola from scratch is that you can basically put in whatever you'd like. Don't like walnuts? Replace them with pecans. Not a big fan of honey? Try making it with maple syrup instead. Throw in a few handful of seeds, if you'd like. Add all your favorite dried fruits. You can even make it peanut-butter flavored, or make a nice, seasonal variety.

The recipe below is my variation of the one found here. I made a batch this past Thursday, but doubled it. Nine cups of granola may sound like a lot, but between one of my roommates and me, it's already almost gone. I guess that's what happens when you eat bowlfuls of it for breakfast three days in a row...

Granola

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (instant oats don't work nearly as well)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup chopped raw almonds (I use a mixture of raw chopped almonds & sliced almonds)

3/4 cup shredded coconut

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup honey (or you can substitute with maple syrup)

2 tablespoons canola oil

raisins and dried cranberries

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 300 F.

In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.

In a separate bowl, mix the honey and oil together. Drizzle the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and mix it all together.

Spread onto a large, rimmed cookie sheet. Bake for about 30-35 minutes, stirring every 10 or 15 minutes, until it's golden brown. Be careful not to let it bake too long, or it'll easily burn. Remove from oven and let it cool completely. Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes

Everybody loves chocolate chip cookie dough. Seriously, though- how many people do you know who, when asked, would say, "oh, no thanks, I really hate cookie dough"? Exactly: none. So when I decided to bake some cupcakes for a party we had last night, I decided I couldn't go wrong with chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes.

They're chocolate chip cupcakes, with the middles cut out & replaced with cookie dough, all topped with cookie dough flavored icing and miniature chocolate chips. They're ridiculously indulgent and bad for you, so I probably won't make them very often, but man, are they delicious.

Everyone who had a cupcake spent the next five minutes gushing over their cupcake as they ate it. They were so well-loved that I didn't even bother admitting that I had screwed up the recipe! I had misread the recipe and put way too little milk into the cupcake batter (3 tablespoons instead of one cup- yikes!), so they turned out less moist than they should have, but I think everyone was too distracted by the delicious cookie dough flavors to pay attention to how moist the cake was :)

Also, I didn't have any condensed milk, so I used this cookie dough recipe for the cupcake filling, and it turned out deliciously! Plus, it has super-healthy Greek yogurt in it, so I can almost justify eating it by the spoonful... almost.