Peanut Butter Granola

I figured this could be a mutli-purpose recipe that would serve both the dessert and breakfast tastes. I immediately found a breakfast option, and dessert can't be far behind.

Peanut Butter Granola

Prep: 15 minutes
Cook: 3 minutes
Bake: 20 minutes
Cool: 20 minutes

3 C uncooked oats
½ C dry-roasted peanuts
½ C sweetened flaked coconut
3 T sesame seeds
½ C creamy peanut butter
½ C firmly packed brown sugar
¼ C butter
1 T light corn syrup
¼ t salt

Preheat oven to 350˚. Toss together oats through sesame seeds. Cook peanut butter through salt in a small saucepan over medium heat 3 minutes or until smooth. Stir peanut butter mixture into oat mixture until blended. Spread mixture in a single layer on a lightly greased, aluminum foil lined 17x12 inch jelly roll pan. Bake 20 minutes or until lightly golden, stirring after 10 minutes. Transfer to wax paper and cool completely, about 20 minutes. Serve with vanilla yogurt and sliced bananas. Makes 6 cups.

Like I said, this immediately became a breakfast food. I had a recipe for a yogurt parfait that I found right around the time I decided to make the peanut butter granola, so I figured the best possible idea was to combine the two. Otherwise, I would not have had any use for the granola. It held up well when it was all being mixed together and there were even some small clumps that loosely formed. And when I spread it all out on the parchment paper, I was shocked at how much there really was. I mean, there was a ton of this stuff.

But it cooked nicely, and again with my oven, I could have backed the time off by about two minutes. There was a small burned taste when it all came out of the oven, but it wasn't very strong and was easily masked by the yogurt. It's probably not substantial enough to be used as a granola-type cereal, and I guess it could be a topping for some kind of apple crisp. But for me, it worked well as a parfait. I used Yoplait Vanilla yogurt and sliced up some banana and layered it all in a glass. Perfect! And portable, too. I took some in the mornings when I left for work and I was able to sneak in a few bites at stop lights. Maybe not the safest thing to do while driving, but I was fairly responsible about it, only driving with my knees when absolutely necessary.

And there you go! I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to use this granola, but the parfait was the easiest thing for me. And in the immortal words of Donkey from Shrek, "Everybody loves parfaits!"