chocolate for breakfast: cocoa-coconut granola

Well, we made it back from our 10 days on the road no worse for wear. Our trip was amazing and I still have a ton more photos to upload onto Flickr. The painted hills in Oregon were beautiful, we had a great warm night of camping in the Washington Okanogan, we drank delicious beer at the Silver Moon Brewery in Bend (and also had some really good Hawaiian beer & my birthday dinner at the Kona Mix Plate)...and then there was Portland! Oh boy, do I love that city. We ate at Pine State Biscuits twice for breakfast, thought we might win at trivia at the Basement Pub (we didn't), played many games of darts at various locales, and drank my favorite beer at Amensia Brewing (their Copacetic IPA, if you must know).

But now I'm back home, the weather in Vancouver is not only sunny but HOT. Hooray! I made this granola a few weeks ago, but like all granola, once it's tightly put away in a cupboard it can last ages. And oh boy, it was the perfect breakfast treat to make a Vancouver homecoming breakfast truly worthwhile. I took Nigella's recipe for cocoa granola and omitted the peanuts (but golly, that sounds good too!) and added coconut and almonds instead. So far I've eaten it with strawberries while the husband enjoyed his with bananas...but the best was scooping up the deliciousness with Granny Smith apple slices. No spoon required! It also helped that I was eating my granola with my favorite store-bought yogurt, Liberté's coconut yogurt. It seriously made the chocolate and coconut in the granola just a bit more special.

While you might think this is a decadent breakfast (and it is), it's also low fat. There's applesauce instead of a lot of oil and if you don't have applesauce on hand, it's really easy to whip some up. This granola was crunchy, sweet (but not tooth-achingly so) and if you wanted to make this all vegan, just sub in some more agave or brown rice syrup to replace the honey. I'll definitely be making this again.

And if you want a bit more reading, why not check out my latest post over at the Food Network Canada blog, Bazaar. It's a post about my favorite Vietnamese sandwich which is found in Vancouver's Chinatown for a mere $3.15. And you can find out just how mis-named this blog really is...do I really like sandwiches? Find out now!

cocoa-coconut granola
1/4 c cocoa
4 1/2 c rolled oats
1 c shredded coconut
1/2 c sunflower seeds
1 c roughly chopped almonds
1 t kosher salt
2 t ground cinnamon
large pinch each nutmeg & cardamom
3/4 c brown sugar
1/3 c agave nectar
1/4 c honey
3/4 c applesauce
2 T olive oil

Preheat oven to 300. In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients together. In a small saucepan, heat up agave nectar, honey, apple sauce and olive oil just until extra runny and then pour over dry ingredients. Mix until everything has been coated with the wet sticky stuff. Pour into a large glass baking dish or several walled cookie sheets and place in the oven, turning over occasionally so that everything dries out evenly. After 40 minutes to an hour, remove from oven and cool on counter. Store in a tight lidded container.