Homemade Raw Superfood Granola

Homemade raw superfood granola

For those that love a nice crunchy texture bursting with multiple flavors, you’ll adore this homemade granola recipe. Granola used to be one of my favorite snack foods when I ate more processed, packaged organic foods and wasn’t as clean with my food choices. This is a very flexible recipe that can be adapted based upon what ingredients you currently have in your conscious kitchen and I advise making more than you expect you’ll want to since it’s a pretty addictive healthy snack for your entire family.

The Raw Superfood Granola makes a wonderful travel food and is ideal for people who are super busy with crazy schedules (or many kids) who typically grab whatever is easy when they’re out grabbing a bite to eat on their lunch break.

The base of the recipe is buckwheat, nuts and seeds of choice, raw honey, and organic superfood and/or tonic herbal powders of choice. I used multiple sweeteners (raw honey, lucuma and stevia extract), and many of the superfoods I have in my superwoman stash. It doesn’t have to be as many ingredients as I list; I just wanted to load it up with as much as I could as an experiment to see if it would still be tasty – and, it was! I love simple foods too, yet I do enjoy loading up recipes like this with as much goodness as possible so each bite is packed with nutrition.

The amounts you use aren’t really that important, but I’ve given you a general sense of the amounts I used below. I didn’t measure anything and used my intuition; the base is soaked and rinsed buckwheat and nuts + seeds (so it wasn’t just buckwheat granola) with small amounts of everything else.  If you want a lighter granola, use more buckwheat and if you want a more dense, heavy, and nutty granola, use more nuts and seeds. Play around and make a different version each time!

Buckwheat directions: soak a few cups of organic buckwheat (bought in the bulk food section at natural health food stores) in spring water overnight. Rinse thoroughly the next morning – the gooey-ness will go away if rinsed well enough. Let it drip in the sink for a while and then sit on the counter to dry (same process as making sprouts). You can use the buckwheat right away or sprout them for a several more hours or again, overnight.

In making the recipe this way (with a diverse selection of ingredients and choices), I took a chance that it would turn out better than the raw food granola at natural health food stores. This recipe is WAY beyond anything that can be purchased in the raw food section of stores and is incredibly more nutritious and cost-effective.

Pre-dehydrated granola mixture spread evenly on tray

Ingredients (100% raw + organic)

Your Granola Base (approximate measurements):
1+ cup sprouted buckwheat
1/2-1 cup soaked pumpkin seeds
1/2 -1 cup soaked sunflower seeds
1/2 cup cashews or macadamia nuts (truly raw, please!)
1 T homemade almond butter (really nice delicious addition to bind ingredients if you want that)

OR – do primarily buckwheat with just a couple small handfuls of nuts and/or seeds. I did this in my 2nd batch & it’s awesome.

* nuts and seeds do not need to be dehydrated, but they certainly can be – I took them right out of the bowl they were soaking in

Dried Fruit:
- goji berries (I only use the Dragon Herbs Heaven Mountain or Bija brands)
- dried cherries
- raisins (not nearly as nutritious as goji berries, but an good option especially for kids)

Superfoods of Choice (possibilities are endless – I’ve just listed here what I made in the batch that’s pictured; use select ingredients in amounts desired; make a different batch each time and experiment!):
- maca (energy, stamina and hormone balancing)
- cacao (powder and/or sweetened or plain nibs)
- mucuna (natural mood-booster)
- noni powder (super immunity)
- wild blue green algae, spirulina, and/or chlorella (by HealthForce)*
- marine phytoplankton (another epic algae)*
- hand-harvested local pine pollen (or bought online)
- Chocolate or Vanilla Phycocyanin Warrior Food (raw vegan protein powder)

* I consider algae to be very important in a nutritional program and put it in everything.

Sweeteners:
- approx 1 T vanilla or cinnamon infused raw honey (or your favorite raw honey!)
- 1 teaspoon lucuma
- pinches of stevia extract powder (Kal brand), (optional)

* If you’d rather not use raw honey and prefer to keep it super low-glycemic, add more lucuma and stevia to taste. It can be done and really taste dee-lish! You can always add other sweeteners, but the ones I list are my personal favorites.

Flavor Enhancers:
- 1 teaspoon wildcrafted vanilla bean
- pinches of sea salt

Directions: Mix your ingredients all together in the food processor. Pulse until mixed well – do not over pulse (unless you want to turn this into granola bars which I’ll share a recipe for in another post)! Spread mixture onto teflex dehydrator sheets and dehydrate for several hours or overnight. Check on your granola and flip once the one side is dry and crunchy, and dehydrate for another few hours until it’s the way you want it.

Package some up and feed it to your kids, keep it around as a healthy snack to nibble on, and bring it with you on road trips so there’s something nutrient-dense that you can eat in lieu of pre-packaged products made with less love than this chewy granola recipe I’ve shared here!