Hope everyone is set for Christmas by now!  This year is a weird one for me – no one is coming over, Tony is still eating bland food and its weird not to be spending most of the day in my kitchen making a big feast!  Pretty sure I am not going to be making a crown roast for one, so I may just have a bowl of leftover chicken noodle soup and some crunchy bread.

I am making a breakfast casserole for Christmas morning, it would feel like Christmas without it. 😀

Now onto the winners of the Chobani!  I used random.org, and it chose these numbers:

13 – Amanda at Getting to Goal

15 – Joanne (blog reader) 😀

54 – Marie at Feeding Five (you need to check out her 2011 Christmas card – so cute!)

Congrats!  Send me your mailing address to mybizzykitchen@gmail.com and I’ll forward it to Chobani.

I knew I wasn’t going to have time to make my boss granola before I was off for the long weekend.  She tends to like really crunchy granola, but I hadn’t been too successful.

I decided to toss the granola in a sugar syrup before baking and it worked!

Supa Crunchy Granola

  • each 2/3 cup serving is 7 PointsPlus

Ingredients:

  • 5 cups rolled oats (not quick oats)
  • 1/2 cup ground flax seed
  • 2 cups sliced almonds
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup water
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 cup dried cherries
  • 1 cup whole almonds
  • 1 cup milk chocolate chips

Combine everything but the water and 3/4 cup brown sugar and chocolate chips in a large bowl.  Heat oven to 300 degrees.  Put the water and brown sugar in a pan and bring to a boil.  Once at a boil, stir occassionally for about 5 minutes – you want to make sure the sugar has all dissolved.

Pour the hot sugar mixture over the granola and mix really well.  Divide the granola between two jelly rimmed pans, and bake for 40 minutes, mixing the granola and switching the pans.  Once cool, add the chocolate chips and store in an air tight container.

This is the only granola I’ve made that’s stayed crunchy – usually its crunchy when its cooled, but when I’ve put it in a container before, it just gets soft again. Success!

I am going to make a similar version today, but with pumpkin and slivered almonds. 😀

I probably won’t post again until Monday – I just want to thank everyone who takes the time to stop by my little corner of the world, your emails, support and comments are much appreciated!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!