This Vanilla Cranberry Almond Granola is healthy and delicious! This granola focuses on oats, dried fruit, seeds, nuts, and a prevalent vanilla flavor. 

THE INGREDIENTS:

Oats: Whether you’re making this vanilla cranberry almond granola or an entirely different kind-oats are a must have! They add a lot of bulk to our granola and differentiate it from trail mix. They also combine well with the brown sugar in order to have a few clusters (large granola pieces) on the tray.

Unsweetened Dried Cranberries: You can’t have vanilla cranberry almond granola without cranberries! With crunchy nuts, oats, and seeds, it’s nice to have something a bit soft to shake things up. In comes dried fruit! Cranberries also provide a tart and sweet flavor that prevent this granola from getting the title of “bland”. Whenever we are out of cranberries, we substitute in raisins and this granola is still super delicious! So, if you’re out, try reaching for the raisins (or “craisins”) instead. 

Sliced Almonds: The flavor of almonds pairs well with both cranberries and vanilla, making this granola have three stand-out flavors. It also provides a harder crunch than the oats do. Adding some protein means this granola helps you stay full a bit longer!

We’ve made this granola with slivered almonds, sliced almonds, and whole almonds. Although all work and are amazing 1:1 substitutes for this recipe, we say sliced almonds gave the best result. When we were testing, we were a bit like Goldilocks! Whole almonds can be a bit large to bite into when you consider how small the oats and sunflower seeds are. Slivered almonds blend in with the granola and don’t stand out quite as much. Sliced almonds are apparent without being too large. Sliced almonds are juuussttt right! If you don’t have almonds on hand, we think cashews would make the best nut substitute in this recipe. Use what you have! 

Sunflower Kernels: For a quick word lesson before we get into this one, sunflower kernels are just the edible part of sunflower seeds. We may not mention sunflower kernels in the title of this granola recipe, but they still are quite nice to have! Sunflower kernels add a bit more variety to this recipe and help contribute to a bunch of flavors and textures. If you don’t have sunflower kernels on hand, you can either add 3 tablespoons of oats to make up for the missed kernels or swap them out for other seeds you have on hand, such as pepitas! 

Brown Sugar: Without a hint of sweetness, granola just isn’t something we’d want to reach for! With that being said, we don’t view granola as a dessert, so we wanted to do the minimum amount of sugar to get the sweetness across. We chose brown sugar as one of our sweeteners because, when exposed to high heat, brown sugar gets sticky and helps to “glue” together parts of our granola to form clusters (aka large granola pieces).

In addition to that, its signature molasses-esque flavor pairs well with our vanilla cranberry almond flavor. If you like your granola clumpy, you’ll want to get rid of the agave nectar in this recipe and replace it with 2 additional tablespoons of brown sugar. Due to changing the liquid content of this recipe, you’ll have to watch the granola more closely as it will most likely need to bake for less time than stated in our recipe. You can make this granola sweeter by adding an additional tablespoon of brown sugar. However, we do not recommend decreasing the amount of brown sugar in this recipe. It’s already at a minimum amount!

If you don’t have brown sugar on hand, you can substitute it 1:1 for agave nectar. Be aware that you’ll have to cook your granola a bit longer due to the higher liquid content. You’ll also miss out on getting any granola clusters! We highly recommend doing a bit of agave nectar and a bit of brown sugar for the best flavor. 

Agave Nectar: Agave nectar is a sweet syrup from a succulent plant! From an agave plant, to be specific. This liquid sweetener adds sweetness without any prevalent flavor, making it perfect to sweeten the granola without additional flavor covering up our vanilla goodness. It also adds more liquid to our granola, which is necessary for our baking time to be accurate. If you don’t have agave nectar on hand, we recommend reaching for neutral flavored liquid sweeteners, such as monk fruit extract or honey. Maple syrup or molasses would just add too much flavor and cover up our vanilla cranberry almond goodness! You can also replace the agave nectar 1:1 with brown sugar, but be aware you’ll 1) get more granola clusters, 2) possibly cover up the vanilla flavor, and 3) need to adjust your baking times to account for having less liquid coating your granola. 

Vegetable Oil: If you want something crispy or crunchy, from fried chicken to this granola, you’re going to need some oil. Vegetable oil is a neutral oil that helps our granola get a desirable texture without imparting any extra flavor. You can use another neutral oil in its place, but we recommend not adjusting the amount of oil in this recipe. It can affect the baking times, texture, or lead to a greasy granola (if increasing). 

Vanilla: This is vanilla cranberry almond granola, after all! To be worthy of being the very first word in our title, we couldn’t use a skimpy amount of vanilla. This may seem like a lot of vanilla, but we’re confident it’s not overpowering. The more you reduce the vanilla, the harder it will be to detect and you might just end up with cranberry almond granola. We normally like to reach for alcohol-free vanilla flavor, but regular vanilla extract also works great! If you purchase vanilla that contains artificial flavoring, you’ll have to adjust the vanilla to taste as artificial vanilla can be quite strong. If you are to leave the vanilla out of this recipe, you’ll have less liquid, aka your baking time and texture may be affected. 

Cinnamon: Hey, isn’t this supposed to be vanilla flavored? Don’t worry, this granola recipe definitely is! A little underlying cinnamon spice goes well with every flavor in this granola-from our dried fruit to our vanilla extract. It boosts the flavor of this granola without the cinnamon flavor making this seem like something cinnamon sugar flavored. Although you can adjust the cinnamon, you risk there not being enough to add any noticeable flavor or increasing it to the point where this is a cinnamon granola, instead. Adjust to your tastes, though, we won’t stop you. 

KEY INFORMATION: 

Is Granola Good For You? Just like most food, this vanilla cranberry almond granola is good in moderation. At a ¼ cup serving, we’d say you get some of the positive benefits of oats, seeds, nuts, and dried fruit without a high amount of sugar or fat. It has a bit of protein from the nuts, some antioxidants from the cranberries, and some fiber, vitamins, and complex carbohydrates from the oats. 

What Is The Texture of This Granola Recipe? This granola recipe is crisp and crunchy without anywhere close to be “as hard as a rock”! It has a few clusters throughout, but most of the granola remains un-clustered. 

What Goes with Vanilla Cranberry Almond Granola? Although this granola is great as a snack on its own, it never hurts to pair it with something! First, let’s start off with breakfast. You can make a lovely bowl of oatmeal or cream of wheat and place some of this granola on top. You can also mix it with your normal hard cereal for a bit more flavor. If you’re making some french toast or a breakfast pastry, feel free to add this on top! You can even bake your muffins with a little bit of this granola on top. Now, what about dessert? We say granola goes great with pudding! It adds crunch and adds a little bit more sweetness to an already sweet dessert.