Milk Chocolate Granola

For some reason, as I was creating granolas of various flavors, I felt that I MUST make a chocolate granola. As usual, I pursued the Internet for recipe ideas.

The first one just added small chunks of chocolate to a regular granola. I tried it. Jun picked all the chocolate pieces out, ate them and declared breakfast to be over! So...that wasn't going to work.

Then I tried a recipe based on unsweetened cocoa powder. It is pretty tough to maintain a balance of enough sugar for the cocoa and not using too much sugar for the granola. So...it didn't pan out either.

Then I thought of the Cinnamon Chip Granola recipe I had come up with and remembered that I had chocolate chips in my fridge. Well, I did then. We finished them off. Sad face.

They were semi-sweet chips. I cut them up, added additional sugar to my basic recipe and used some Hershey's Chocolate syrup a friend who was returning to the States sent me. This recipe (as were all the others), was pronounced GOOD by Jun. But, she likes chocolate. Ryu, my husband, on the other hand was not impressed. And, to be honest, it didn't make me burst out into song either.

So, this past week I decided to try once more. If THIS recipe didn't work - we would be forever Chocolate Granola-less.

And this recipe was eaten three times by Ryu - voluntarily. Jun loved it. We are out and it is Thursday. It's supposed to last till Saturday.

That being said, try it. You might like it. Honestly, I haven't burst into song over it, but I'm humming. If you use a less sweet chocolate, you might want to consider increasing the brown sugar to compensate...or not! Also, you will notice the basic recipe is quite close to my other granolas. It makes small clumps that stand up well in milk, as my friend Abigail noted, but that don't break your teeth, as my Mother noted!

Milk Chocolate Granola

Dry - mix these dry ingredients well in a large bowl

2 cups/180 gm oatmeal (I use old fashioned oats from Costco)
1/2 cup/60 gm whole wheat flour
1/4 cup/20 gm wheat germ
1/4 cup/35 gm crushed all bran cereal

Note - you are looking for a rough total of 1 cup of flours in addition to the oats. I currently have flax seed meal (from the US) - so add some of that. I have used corn flour, corn meal, and have seen a recipe using rye flour - which...hmmm. I have also crushed up genmai cereal flakes in my coffee grinder and used them in place of other flours. So, use what you have!

1/4 cup/35 gm brown sugar (you may want to increase this if you use a less sweet chocolate.)
1 tsp/5cc cocoa powder - I use this to add a bit of color!
1/2 tsp/2.5 cc salt
1/2 cup/70 gm chopped milk chocolate - I used bar chocolate we just HAPPENED to have in the house. Cut about 1/2 of it rather finely and chop the other half more coarsely for some BURSTS of chocolate in your granola.

Wet - Mix these ingredients together before adding to the dry ingredients

1/4 cup/60cc oil
1/3 cup/80cc cold water
2T/30cc Chocolate Syrup. If you don't have it - use honey or Karo Syrup or ???

Stir the wet and dry ingredients together well, using your hands is a good idea. Spread the granola out on a cookie sheet (you might want to use oven paper or foil...or not) and bake at 140C/275F for 1 hour. I stirred it rather frequently after the 30 minute mark because I didn't want the precious chocolate to burn! It didn't!

I tried this granola with raisins. Killed the chocolate flavor. I tried it with peanuts. Same problem. Maybe chocolate flavored raisins? HAHAH!