Golden Honey Granola

One day I woke up and thought, "One often puts honey in granola but its taste is overshadowed by all the other things." One of my favorite breakfasts is butter and honey toast. Mmmmm. So, I thought, "I wonder if I could make granola that yummy?"

Those who have read some of my other granola recipes will wonder if this qualifies as granola - the recipe is THAT different. And super simple. And takes NO strange ingredients. Well, at least none that I think are strange, though maybe not those used in "regular" granolas. Here goes!

Golden Honey Granola

Dry Ingredients

2 1/2 cups WHITE oats (I use the "real" ones from Costco. Old fashioned.)
1/2 cup WHITE flour. Yep - different from other granolas.
1/2 tsp. WHITE salt
1/3 cup WHITE sugar. Stay with me here!
1 tsp. baking powder - Really! (It gives the granola a light crunchy texture.)

Wet Ingredients

1/4 cup melted butter (or margarine)
2 Tbsp. honey
1/3 cup water

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Combine the wet ingredients and add to the dry. Mix well. Spread out on a baking sheet. Bake at 140C for 1 hour - stirring every 10 minutes after the first 30. Makes about 5 cups of granola. We prefer this granola without any fruit or nuts. The "WHITE" ingredients help the wonderful flavors of butter and honey to shine through. You know, if I HAD vanilla essence, I might add a teaspoon of that too and see how it tastes.

I'd love to hear how you like it!

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!

Cookie Scoop

I have been interested in getting a cookie scoop for a long long time.

When I was a kid I loved to mix up the cookies, but hated using the two-spoon process to put the cookie dough on the cookie pans. I turned the kitchen over to my Mom for that and went outside to play. She always did a great two-spoon job.

Now that I have my own home - OK, I've been on my own since High School, but... - I make cookies for the fans at my house! It is so fun that Jun loves cookies. Must be the taste of Mother's Love - or the sugar. Hmmm. Anyway, I have been doing the two-spoon process all the while pining away for a cookie scoop.

On various trips back to the States I have looked for the right sized scoop - whatever that is - and FINALLY found one on my trip this summer. My parents' smallish town has a very very well stocked kitchen store. I paid over my $14 for a cookie scoop - is this NOT expensive? - used it once at home and, when packing to come back to Japan forgot it!

A couple of weeks ago my folks sent a package of stuff I'd ordered and threw in my cookie scoop too! Today I mixed up a batch of cake mix cookies and got out my cookie scoop. I had cookies on the pan in nothing flat.

Then I began to think. (My husband often tells me I think too much.) Each and every cookie is the exact same size. With the same amount of dough. The same shape. They'd be the same color too, if my oven was a bit more uniform in heating. And scooping out the dough really took so little time, the cookies could not be called a labor of love at all. Well, the fact that I started with a cake mix might have made you all wonder about the love, but cake mixes are spendy here, so the fact that I did use one was an expression of love - oh, and thanks to my friend for giving it to me!

So, I'm in a quandary about the cookie scoop. It is the process of baking that helps me relieve stress. That helps me use some creativity. It isn't the end product, though if it is good, I'm happy. It isn't exactly the ease of it, though this blog is called "kantan" (easy) cooking. Being able to do the two-spoon process well was kind of an initiation into adulthood. Anybody can use a cookie scoop.

But, I must admit, I DID pay $14 dollars for it. And it was really easy. And kind of fun. And...well, we'll see if I put it in a box when we move next, or pass it on.

Biscuits - Drop, Oil

This blog is really for EASY cooking - not fancy, but stuff Ryu gives the "umai" (delicious) vote to. These biscuits fit that role. I am not a biscuit maker. If you have read any of my other posts, you will perhaps remember that I do not like to cut shortening or butter into flour. I have a pastry cutter and CAN do it if necessary, but will go to great lengths NOT to do so. Also, big old cans of Crisco are not available to me and butter is too spendy for daily consumption. However, a student received many many bottles of oil for a mid-summer gift. She and her husband are not great oil consumers, so she gave me a bunch of them. I don't use oil in much of my regular cooking, but...free is FREE!

Then, I found this recipe for biscuits - using oil. And they are sufficient if you like drop biscuits. If you are dead set on cut out ones, don't try this recipe - though the original recipe says you can roll the dough out between pieces of wax paper - why try to do the impossible???

As this recipe is not the same as the one Betty Crocker has on her web site, I'll post it all here:

Baking Powder Biscuits - Drop, Oil

1 3/4 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup oil

Heat oven to 450F or 230C. Mix dry ingredients together. Combine milk and oil and dump into the dry ingredients. Mix with a fork until all is moist. Avoid over-mixing. Using a spoon, drop the batter into a greased cookie sheet (I never grease mine.) Bake until golden brown. 10-12 minutes (cooking time depends on the size of your biscuits - so check on them.)

Source: Betty Crocker's Cookbook, New and Revised Edition, Copyright 1978. Baking Powder Biscuits page 194

In the original recipe, the oil is shortening and is cut into the flour mixture.

Bread Crumb Cobbler

Our family is more or, as was THIS day, LESS bilingual. On the "less" days, that seventh sense is really important. If someone is tired, this seventh sense is usually out of service and strange things happen.

I was on a bread baking binge this winter. Yes, it is now fall again. Months later, and finally this post is applicable! Finally! My husband KNEW I'd been baking bread. Our minuscule kitchen was covered in flour. He'd been EATING the bread! How could he not have understood me when I gave him the shopping list and asked for...

OK, let me back up a tiny bit and give you a tiny Japanese language lesson so you won't think I was totally crazy! We put the word "ko" before or after things/people/animals to make them small. Like "dog" is "inu". A puppy is..."ko inu." Pretty cool, huh? Many women's last names end in "ko" - like an endearative. (Was that English? Oh well.) In the kitchen we have items that have been ground up and are called "something something 'ko'". Like flour is "mugi ko."

Now, I suppose there are tons of different kinds of flour in the US too, but I never had to feed a family there so never thought about it. But, here the flour that I usually buy here is definitely NOT bread flour. And I needed bread flour. The word for bread is "pan". I asked Ryu to buy me a bag of "pan ko." Now, doesn't that make sense to MOST OF YOU OUT THERE? OK, I know some who speak Japanese are howling in their green tea, so I'll let the rest of you kind folk in on the joke.

Ryu came home with a HUGE bag of Bread Crumbs. Yep. And I KNEW this, of course, but...in the heat of the moment spaced right out - "pan ko" means ground up crumbled bread. Thus began the 1/2 year long search for ways to use up this huge bag of bread crumbs.

I always suspected that they could be used as a topping in dessert but never experimented to figure out how. Then, just yesterday evening - when I was FINALLY down to a mere 3/4 cup of bread crumbs, I ran across this recipe when I was drooling over individual pie slice pans. I made a 1/2 batch of it - see above at the mere 3/4 cup of bread crumbs remaining - and it was so so wonderful!

Let me tell you why it was wonderful. Cobbler is basically a fruit pie filling with no crust on the bottom and one of a few crusts on the top. The first common crust is a standard pie crust. My Grandma Mary used to make this. I couldn't understand why someone would go through the torture of cutting shortening into flour for a mere cobbler! My Mom (she'll surely correct me if I'm wrong), would make the drop biscuit type top crust for cobbler. This is fine if you can actually get the fruit done and the biscuits neither soggy or burnt. The third type of crust that I am familiar with is the oatmeal crust. Frankly it is usually too something. Too sweet, too...something.

So, that is why this crust is so wonderful. It is TRULY crunchy! It was way too sweet, but THAT can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The recipe states that you can use prepackaged "panko," which I understand is on sale in most supermarkets in the US now, or that you could use fresh bread crumbs. You may be scratching your head at the oxymoron of fresh bread crumbs, but...my mother in law makes them when she makes pork cutlets. Grab your fresh bread and a cheese grater and give it a try! I think a "crunchy" bread with nuts and stuff in it would really add to this topping! Mom - why don't you try it and let me know?

Red Tomato Chutney

You may or may not remember that I made chutney for the first time last winter. And we loved it! It is a Pear and Peach Chutney with ginger root in it that makes it nice and HOT! It is great with curry and rice!

So, when my friend at Shinshu Life published a recipe for red (vs. still green) tomato chutney, I was really enthralled! Just looking at the color made me want to rush out and make it. However, Shinshu Life cooking is based on their wonderful and HUGE gardening enterprise. My balcony garden, on the other hand, was recycled early on in the summer, and replaced with flowers. So, when I compared prices of "real" (fresh) tomatoes with canned, canned won out. Here is my version of Shinshu Life's school textbook's Red Tomato Chutney:



Red Tomato Chutney


2 cans whole peeled tomatoes - I roughly cut them up with a pair of kitchen shears
3/4 cup rice vinegar
1/2 cup raisins
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. pickle spice wrapped in a mesh cloth - cloves are the ticket, I think!
1 cup sugar

I threw all of this (EXCEPT THE SUGAR) into a saucepan and boiled it till the liquid was reduced by about 1/2. About 20 minutes. Then I added the sugar and boiled it for about 20-30 minutes. Ryu (my husband), isn't a real vinegar fan, and found this to be a bit sour at first, so be sure to adjust the sugar to your own taste. This made 2-3 cups of chutney. The color is so rich and the flavor so robust! I love it!

We weren't sure what to eat it on but it would work with yogurt - REALLY! and cream cheese and crackers. It is also great with chicken and white rice. I think we will be finishing it up tonight! Mmmm! Thanks for the inspiration, Heather!

Cinnamon Chip Granola

I have created so many wonderful posts about newly created recipes. Posts describing the process, the root of the recipe, the delicious discovery. Only to actually taste the creation and have to chalk it up to "practice." As I stood in the shower this morning smelling the delicious aroma of cinnamon wafting out of my kitchen - 2 feet away - I asked myself, "Self, will this be another post and recipe that will be tossed into the pit of experience? Or, will this really be one you can print?" And, as Jun and I chowed down this granola at lunch, I am so so happy to say that THIS one is a keeper!

I have been trying to make a REAL Cinnamon Granola. One that tasted like cinnamon. I made one recipe and put a Tablespoon of precious cinnamon in it with a little extra sugar. Think of cinnamon sugar toast without the sugar. YUCK! Of course, we ate it, but... So, this morning when Jun and I finished the last of the Peanut Butter Granola and I reminded myself that my supermarket no longer stocks peanuts (think small store, but not THAT small, friends), and I would have to trape around looking for another store that sold them, (Seriously, how can a store stock selling PEANUTS?) I decided it was time to try a new recipe again. (Last week's Chocolate Granola try was just that, a try. No printable post!) So, I happened to remember that I had cinnamon chips in my fridge just looking for a use. (They are WONDERFUL in scones, but...you have to cut butter into flour. That, is a labor of love at our house!) It turned out sooooo good!

The "base" of the recipe is a lot like my Peanut Butter and Gingersnap Granolas. If it isn't broken, don't fix it, I say. And, it makes lovely chunks which satisfies the child in my house, (Jun). The only caveat is that I get the mini cinnamon chips from the US. I THINK I've seen some in Japan, sold by the tablespoon, but am not sure.

Cinnamon Chip Granola

2 cups oatmeal (I use old fashioned.)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/8 cup crushed all bran
1/4 cup flax seed flour (Truly, you could substitute any flours for the wheat germ, all bran or flax seed. This is a truly flexible recipe!)
1/3 cup mini cinnamon chips (I've put the link to King Arthur Flour's chips.)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt

Mix the dry ingredients well and add:

1/4 cup oil
2 Tbsp. honey
1/3 cup hot water
1 tsp. vanilla

Stir to combine well. Use your hands if you like. Spread out on a baking sheet. Use "oven paper" if you have it as this granola sticks more than some others. I never have oven paper, however, and survive! Bake at 140 C for 1 hour. I'd probably stir it after the hour and then let it cool in the oven. I didn't stir it today and had one huge LOVELY chunk! SMILE! It breaks up easily, however and Jun was happy! Store in an air tight container. Serve with raisins - if you like! Incidentally, I was surprised to find that many Japanese don't like raisins. Who knew?