Crunchy granola

I've begun making King Arthur Flour's crunchy granola every week. The photo above is from the first batch, using whatever we had in the house--walnuts, raisins, dates, and dried apricots.

We modified the recipe somewhat:
1/3 c. oil (instead of 1/2 c.)
1 c. nuts (instead of 3 c.)
1/4 tsp. salt (instead of 1/2 tsp.)
rice syrup (instead of maple syrup, because it has no sucrose)
2 c. dried fruit (instead of 5 c., to cut down on the fruit sugars)

It's fantastic. It came out exactly as the recipe said; here it is baked up, before the fruit is added (I didn't mess around with parchment paper--just greased the baking sheets):


We figured out that our recipe comes out to $6.08/lb. (King Arthur says on their blog entry that their recipe is $6.70/lb.) That's .38/oz. It sounds expensive, but the cheapest granola that we can get at our grocery store without added sugar is .50/oz., so we're coming out ahead--and that's even with the fancy, organic walnuts! With farmers' market dried fruit and nuts, in a different mix every week for variety, it's even cheaper--and more delicious.

(And in case you're wondering, our version is 225 calories per cup.)