Granola for Breakfast

We love homemade granola in our house. My boys are notorious breakfast (or should I say non breakfast) eaters and I always have to make them eat in the morning. I know how important it is that they eat something before they go off to school but the battle does get rather tedious. However I find that if I have homemade granola in the house they are more than likely to eat some with some nice yoghurt with pretty much no effort on my part. As well as that they will eat it when they get home from school or after dinner if they are still hungry. The good thing about it is that I know what is in it, that it is relatively healthy and will last the distance as far an energy goes. Over the years I have tried many recipes but this one I made today is really delicious. It has just the right amount of sweetness and doesn't have a dominating flavour. It's a mix of a few recipes with my own bits in it so therefore I think I can safely call it my own. Of course you can put whatever you like in it but I like this combination. So here's my recipe:

Homemade Granola

5 c jumbo oats
1 c sunflower seeds
1/2 c sesame seeds
1/4-1/2 c bran flakes
1/4 c flax seeds
1 1/2 c almonds some roughly chopped
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 c maple syrup
1/4 c honey
3/4 c apple sauce
2 Tbsp grapeseed oil
1 c raisins
1/2 c dried cranberries (sometimes I add in chopped up dried figs and/or apricots)
1/2-1 c coconut flakes

Oven to 150 C.
Put the oats, seeds, cinnamon, bran flakes, nuts onto a big low sided roasting dish. Mix well.

In a small pot warm the brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, oil, vanilla and apple sauce until the sugar dissolves (this hardly takes any time at all as you don't want it to boil)

Pour over the oat mix and stir in well so all the oats are moistened.

Bake about 1 hour stirring every 10 mins until it is golden and losing the wetness. Add in the coconut for the last 5 mins. The granola will crisp up on sitting.

Add in the dried fruit and wait until it's really cold before you store it away.