Granola Taste-Test

Recently, I've become interested in granola.  Basically, I had a surplus of oats and wanted to find a creative recipe that wouldn't take a lot of effort and wanted to include items I already had on hand.  Personally, I hate "All-recipes" and find it to be a very annoying and overwhelming website, so I never go there for anything.  Somehow I stumbled across this recipe for Olive Oil Granola and figured, "eh, why not?"  So last Sunday night, with a few changes, I made it.  Every morning this past week I have had some in my yogurt for breakfast and it is SO GOOD.  Honestly, I can't get enough of it and I just ran out yesterday morning.

Now, I'm on a quest to find awesome granola recipes (and even told my boyfriend yesterday that I wish I could find a cool granola cookbook, with the exception that I hate cookbooks focused on one dish) and I don't really know where to start.  In search of inspiration, I picked up some granola yesterday from Whole Foods (each bin was on sale for $2.99/pound and I got four bags at about 50 cents a piece).  This morning, I woke up and decided to "taste-test" each one (with my boyfriend, of course); greek yogurt and honey in one bowl, almond milk in another.

I purchased Cherry Vanilla, Maple Pecan Dream, Wild Blueberry Flax, and Almond Maple.

First, I tasted them all in yogurt.  My favorite was a tie between Wild Blueberry Flax and Maple Pecan Dream; they weren't too weak or too overpowering.  The Maple Almond granola was quite disappointing; it wasn't really even maple-y or almond-y.  Just oats, really.  The Cherry Vanilla was cute (as in appearance), but it tasted kind of artificially sweet.  I probably would never purchase this again and have no intention of immitating it.  None of the granolas lived up to the deliciousness of the Olive Oil granola I made earlier this week.

Then, just in case the honey or yogurt changed the taste of the granola, I tried them in almond milk.  I grew up eating cereal every morning and sometimes I still get that crunchy-sweet craving.  Anyway, they all ranked the same.  The Maple Almond was just sad, Cherry Vanilla was sickeningly sweet, and Wild Blueberry and MPD were shining stars.  I still feel as though Wild Blueberry and MPD need some more depth in flavor; they're not rich at all.  I want a granola that I can crave and savor.  Something that will hold me over until lunch without being a gigantic calorie bomb.

Will I buy any of these granola again?  Probably not.  But, there were some others at Whole Foods that I might want to try in the future.  Particularly the PB&J variation we saw with dried strawberries, YUM!