Our Favorite Coconut Oil Granola Recipe - Pinch of Yum
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Our Favorite Coconut Oil Granola

20 reviews / 5 average

But seriously, you guys, it’s so so so good.

There is no other name for this besides OUR FAVORITE coconut oil granola. My favorite, Bjork’s favorite, my friends’ favorite, our neighbors’ favorite.

It’s a deliciously golden, rustic-feeling medley of oats, pecans, golden raisins, pistachios, and chia seeds coated with coconut oil + honey + cinnamon and baked to crunchy cluster perfection. So much to love, it’s almost hard to talk about. ♡

It makes the house smell like cinnamon heaven, and it elicits compliments from spouses like whoa, and it makes breakfast enough of an event to wake up at First Alarm. FIRST ALARM, guys. Not that I’d ever snooze or anything, but just saying, for those of you who do. Ahem.

Pistachios.
Coconut oil granola.

Normally I don’t consider myself much of a granola girl in either the adjective sense or the food-I-like-to-eat sense. I typically set aside three times a year to eat granola:

  1. At the cabin in the summer, when my parents make the world’s largest batch of granola and we all sit out on the dock with sweatshirts and coffee and little bowls of fresh raspberries and granola and watch the sun rise over the lake. SUMMER COME BAAAACK.
  2. Around Christmas time, when I’m trying to figure out what to give my neighbors and friends, and large batches of granola in jars with a ribbon around the top are suddenly the cutest, most giftable thing ever.
  3. During the whole month of January when I make at least 600 batches of coconut oil granola to “test the recipe.”

I feel like the three times a year granola pattern is about to change. Would daily granola snackage be too much to ask for?

Granola on a pan over the stove.
Granola in a jar with a spoon.

During my 60 day sugar free challenge, I’ve tried to stay away from baking because it’s usually just a set up for something that used to be really good to become really, really bad (unsweetened quinoa cake). –> See Fails. But granola is one of those things that makes me feel cozy, like I’m baking something sweet and yummy, even though it’s mostly like baking marathon runner’s health food. So when the feeling strikes and I need to get out the mixing bowls and lick something delicious off wooden spoons, granola it is.

I originally made this recipe on a whim: late night, watching State of Affairs on Hulu, needing a snack. What else is new tho?

It was completely without a recipe, just sort of eyeballing the measurements, thinking we’d end up with something good enough to eat over yogurt and fruit. Uhmmm yeah. It was absolutely the best granola I had ever made, and of course, OF COURSE, I hadn’t measured one single thing.

Over the course of the next 587 granola batches, I tried to recreate the not-measured recipe, and oh happiest day! I think I’ve finally gotten it. I rarely “develop recipes” where I make them a bajillion times to get them just right – I’m the type of person who would rather scrap the whole thing after two tries rather than continue perfecting a recipe. I think they call it the opposite of patient? I’ve been this way for some time now.

But this coconut oil granola was worth fighting for as evidenced by the year’s worth of various batches of granola we have sitting in jars in our cabinets right now. Which is sort of the best thing ever.

At the risk of being annoying and saying the same things forever, this is OUR FAVORITE coconut oil granola. When you make it, it’ll be like we’re eating breakfast together because that’s how much we love it. Or wait, does that make it better or worse?

Happy weekend, all you granola-ers!

Granola on a sheet pan.
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Coconut Oil Granola on a sheet pan.

Our Favorite Coconut Oil Granola


  • Author: Pinch of Yum
  • Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
  • Yield: 12 (about a half cup per serving) 1x

Description

This Coconut Oil Granola is our ULTIMATE FAVORITE recipe! Made with pecans, pistachios, golden raisins, honey, oats, and coconut oil.


Ingredients

Scale

Dry Ingredients

  • 3 cups rolled oats
  • 1 heaping cup pecans, chopped roughly
  • 1/2 to 3/4 cup pistachios, chopped roughly
  • 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
  • 1/4 cup chia seeds
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup golden raisins

Wet Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup melted coconut oil (see notes)
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 2 tablespoons real maple syrup

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Mix all the dry ingredients together (except the raisins – set aside for later). Whisk the wet ingredients until smooth. Combine the wet and the dry ingredients in a large bowl until the mixture is moistened.
  2. Spread the mixture on the baking sheet in a thin layer (use two pans if necessary – I just use one 10×15 jelly roll pan).
  3. Bake for one hour, stirring every 20 minutes. During the last 20 minutes of baking, stir in the golden raisins. When you remove the granola from the oven at the end, don’t stir it right away – the granola will form crunchy clusters as it cools. Yum!

Notes

To ensure clustering, use 1 cup coconut oil and 1/4 cup honey. The more sticky the mixture, the more clustering will happen.

I made a few batches on parchment paper but I didn’t like how those turned out with the oil sort of absorbing into the paper. If you have a nonstick baking sheet, I’d recommend going without parchment paper.

This recipe is not as good when you reduce the coconut oil. I tried making this recipe with about 1/2 cup coconut oil and it seemed really dry to me.

Be careful with the nuts! If you pulse them in a food processor and they get too fine, they’ll make the granola dry because it almost acts like a flour. I recommend just roughly chopping or barely running them through your processor.

  • Prep Time: 10 mins
  • Cook Time: 1 hour
  • Category: Snack
  • Method: Bake
  • Cuisine: American

Keywords: coconut oil granola, homemade granola recipe, healthy granola recipe

Favorite Coconut Oil Granola - packed with oats, nuts, and dried fruit and NO refined sugar! This is our all time FAVORITE granola recipe!

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152 Comments

    1. Pinch of Yum Logo

      This is the first time I have ever seen flour in granola. Since all of your recipes are so well-conceived there must be a reason for this addition. What was your thought process and how does it affect the final result? This looks absolutely delicious!

      1. Pinch of Yum Logo

        Hi Sally, I used the flour to help create little clusters. They make everything stick together a little more which I liked because I like those clustery pieces!

    1. Pinch of Yum Logo

      That picture with the granola on the stove with flowers, curtain and 2 blue chairs in the background ~ seriously marvelous.

      Speaking about serious, granola can get really expensive when you buy it. Honestly, I’ve never made it before, but just the thought of all the cinnamon goodness wafting out of my kitchen, consider the arm twisted.

      Now I just need to convince you to get a dog. Or a cat. They are much easier and studies have shown that people who have at least one cat are 50% less likely to suffer from a heart attack and stroke!! (at least that’s what I told my husband when I wanted a cat and he didn’t)

  1. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Obsessed with homemade granola lately- I keep making it for everybody to try whether they want some or not! (Which they love!) Can’t wait to try this new recipe! Question: do you have to use whole wheat flour? Will it taste or turn out different with regular flour? Thanks! 🙂

    1. Pinch of Yum Logo

      This looks wonderful! Did you ever tell us if there is a difference in using white vs. whole wheat white flour for the recipe? I don’t have chia seeds and they don’t really appeal to me. Can you suggest another ingredient, or would you recommend omitting them?,

      1. Pinch of Yum Logo

        Hi, Em! White or whole wheat flour should work in this recipe. As for chia seeds, you could leave them out and still get a great result. If you feel that you want to substitute something else in, I would suggest another type of nut or seed.

  2. Pinch of Yum Logo

    YES!! I feel like coconut oil is one of the secrets to nice, clumpy granola. I bet your addition of flour here helps with that, too … My husband is a granola freak (he eats greek yogurt and granola every day or his head will explode), so I’ll have to try this one out for him FOR SURE.

  3. Pinch of Yum Logo

    You mentioned cinnamon in the post, but there’s none in the recipe…..it seems such a perfect compliment that I’ll be adding some anyways 🙂

  4. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I am TOTALLY one to scrap a recipe after two tries, too, haha! And I agree with Karen, granola must be in the air at the end of this chilly January, as mine is coming up next week, ha! This looks delicious 🙂

  5. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Yesterday, I bought 500ml of coconut oil to make my favorite lavender-coconut-lemon-body- scrub, but now I am left with so much oil, which I’ve basically never used for anything else but making peelings! Luckily, I recently discovered your blog as you just solved my dilemma by presenting me with a delicious opportunity to combine my love for granola and backing while making use of the leftover oil. Thank you for this wonderful inspiration!

    http://www.globalspicedblog.tumblr.com

  6. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Oh, do I love how your mind works! I just bought more coconut oil when I didn’t realize I had a half a jar still around, and now was thinking of a granola-filled weekend.

    I’m curious behind the flour addition – can you explain the science? Crunchier/more clumpy/etc??

  7. Pinch of Yum Logo

    This sounds like the perfect way to start the day! I’ve never made granola at home before, but I think we all know that’s about to change…

  8. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Annnnnd now you’ve convinced me to make my own granola. Totally a good thing to be eating breakfast together! But, you know me, that’s just my stalker tendencies kickin’ in. 😉 Cheers to sharing some granola ‘together’!

  9. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I rarely measure ingredients for granola. Sometimes its great others not as much. Pistachios always make a granola for me. It doesn’t happen often but when it does I am in heaven.

  10. Pinch of Yum Logo

    We love the ingredients of this recipe; in the past we’ve had bad luck with home-made granola being too hard and dry. we will give this a shot and tell you how it goes! This is the first entry of your blog that I read out loud to my husband–he wants you to know he thinks you are a poet! Your image in words of eating granola at the lake IS pure poetry! Hope you are enjoying your new kitchen!

      1. Pinch of Yum Logo

        Hey Lindsay! My hubby found your blog and he has created a monster! I have pinned so many of your recipes, and I’m on day one of discovery. I LOVE how you put the nutritional facts (saves putting it in my fitness pal) at the end of the recipe…The only thing I struggle with is I xan’t find the serving size for some. I see you put in grams on some (not sure how that translates to cups, but hey, something to learn), but some don’t have any (like the granola). Thanks for the yummy recipes! The veggie enchilada was a MAJOR hit at our birthday party!

        1. Pinch of Yum Logo

          Hi Jennifer, great question! If the nutrition facts do not state a specific serving size, you can just check at the top of the recipe, where it says how many servings the recipe makes. (Ex: if a recipe makes 6 servings, separate it out into 6 equal portions, and each of those will be one serving for the nutrition facts) Thanks for the comment!

  11. Pinch of Yum Logo

    Like you, I didn’t think that I was a granola girl either (and I’m a vegan, I’m supposed to live on the stuff), until I made my own. It must be that the store bought kind is just so darn sweet, and hard enough to break a tooth. This looks like a great recipe, I’ll have to try it, only substitute the honey for maple syrup. Thanks Lindsay!

  12. Pinch of Yum Logo

    This granola looks fab…my only issue with granola is that I want it to have 100 calories per one cup serving lol, which is essentially impossible unless you make something else and call it granola but it’s really a cup of fruit…I’m gonna focus on the sugar, protein and fiber grams, say “healthy fat” three times, close my eyes and chew! 🙂

  13. Pinch of Yum Logo

    I also wonder about the flour. For some reason, it makes me need an immediate nap. Could I use coconut flour? What do you think would be a good amount? I am not very good at using it yet. a little seems to go a loooooong way. Thanks.