Pumpkin Cranberry Granola makes a great grain-free breakfast or healthy snack. This festive fall granola recipe is made with almonds, macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, pumpkin puree, cinnamon, and a touch of honey, and it is darn delicious!
You will notice that this recipe calls for a 10 hour baking time at 170° –that is not a typo. Baking low and slow, rather than at a high temperature for a shorter time preserves more of the live (or raw) enzymes in a food. Technically, for a food to be raw, it needs to be cooked at 118° or less. However, cooking just above that temperature still preserves more nutrients than cooking at 350°. If you do decide you want to cook this fast and high, feel free. I would recommend starting at around 250° degrees for somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-3 hours, though I haven’t tried that, so I’m not sure what the baking time would be.
You can also experiment with this recipe and make it in a dehydrator. I don’t have one, as in my opinion they take up too much cabinet space. If you use that method, please stop back by and leave a comment to let us know how it goes!
On another note, lately I’ve been working quite a bit on my food photography. Part of that means studying beautiful photographs to see what I like and to learn various techniques. I found the idea for the food styling in the picture that I photographed above on the site, Like Mother Like Daughter.
Paleo Pumpkin Cranberry Granola
Serves: 8
Ingredients
- 1 cup almonds
- 1 cup macadamia nuts
- 1 cup pumpkin seeds
- 1 cup pumpkin puree (homemade or canned pumpkin puree)
- 2-4 tablespoons honey
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon celtic sea salt
- ½ cup dried cranberries, juice sweetened
Instructions
- Place nuts and seeds in a large bowl
- Cover with water and soak overnight
- Drain and rinse the nuts and seeds, discarding soaking water
- Pulse nuts and seeds in food processor
- Pulse until coarsely chopped almost to the consistency of granola
- Very briefly pulse in pumpkin puree, honey, cinnamon, and salt
- Spread mixture out onto 2 baking sheets
- Bake at 170° for 10 hours, then leave in oven with temperature off, but light on, until crispy
- Remove from oven and stir in dried cranberries
- Serve with almond milk or coconut milk
In other news, lately I’ve received a veritable deluge of substitution questions. I wish I had the time to try every permutation of every recipe, with every ingredient! However, unfortunately, I do not. The only way I can know if a recipe will work with the substitution of a different ingredient is to test it. I don’t know the answers intuitively, although it seems like I should! That’s the fun of recipe creation, the only way to know if something works is to test it for yourself.
I often test the recipes that I post on this site a dozen times, sometimes more. After I perfect them I pay someone else to test them again, to make sure they work for someone other than me! You get the idea. It is a long process to make a recipe for you, and I do it for no charge. So please, understand that I cannot answer your substitution questions, nor can I afford to provide nutrition information for free recipes. If you’d like that, check out My Fitness Plan. And please be sure if you try a new formula to stop back by and leave a comment on the recipe you re-jiggered to let us know if it worked!
I did in fact, test this recipe a couple of different ways and I can report that it is fantastic with anywhere from two to four tablespoons of honey. Adjust the amount of this sweetener according to your palate. It tastes much better with four tablespoons, but is still quite tasty with only two. If you’re craving a crunchy, healthy snack you’ll love it! I also tested it with both freshly baked and canned pumpkin. I prefer it with the freshly baked, but it still tastes quite nice with the canned pumpkin.
If you are looking for easy breakfast recipes or healthy snack ideas I’ve got you covered with this Paleo Pumpkin Cranberry Granola recipe. For additional suggestions, check out my breakfast recipes and snack recipes.
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