Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chunk Granola

Good morning! What a week.  Posting a recipe on Saturday morning isn’t the norm for me, but my blogging schedule (that I at least loosely try to stick to) was thrown all out of whack.  If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen that my blog was hacked early in the week.  If you didn’t see my post on there, I’m not surprised as Facebook likes to only show my posts to a handful of you.  But that’s another rant for another day.

Please accept my apology if you came to Happy Healthy Mama this week hoping for some good reading and ended up with a message that it was temporarily unavailable.  If you were frustrated, you can only imagine the level of frustration I was feeling. Some way, some how, some mean, mean hackers snuck their way in and added some malicious coding to my site.  I openly admit that I’m not even sure what that means, so when my hosting company contacted me and told me that my service was suspended until it I removed it, I went into panic mode.  I needed to find help, and fast, because the time was ticking and this was way above my I’m-an-English-major head.  If I tried to find and remove the code myself, I’d probably end up removing half my site.

It’s all resolved now, and I’ve added some additional security measures that will hopefully prevent it from happening again. I hope there are no more chapters to this story.

All right friends, I’ve rambled about that stressful craziness enough. Let’s get to the real reason you all stop by: FOOD!

You’ve all heard the expression “happy wife, happy life,” right?  Well I wholeheartedly believe it’s true.  I also believe the same goes for the other half of the marriage coin:  the husband.  I mean let’s face it.  Can a wife really be happy with a grumpy husband?  I don’t think so.  That’s where another expression comes into play: “the way to his heart is through his stomach.”

That’s how this recipe was born.  While this Lightened Up Granola or this Blueberry Pie Granola are wonderful and lovely and I think darn near perfect for a healthy granola option, the husband has a different definition of perfect.  Tim wants a granola with a little more sugar, a little more fat, and a little more….chocolate.  

This recipe was developed specifically for my husband.  Peanut butter+chocolate is his favorite combination and he loves a sweet, dessert-type granola to snack on.  It’s still a healthy granola recipe without refined sugar and all real food ingredients.  It’s just not quite as saintly as my other granola recipes.  But it makes Tim happy and guess what?  That makes me happy.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chunk Granola

This Peanut-Butter Chocolate Chunk Granola is super crunchy with big chunks!  It’s easy to throw together with no chopping required.  

• Author: Healthy Happy Mama
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 45 minutes
• Total Time: 55 minutes
• Yield: 6 cups 1x
• Category: Breakfast
• Cuisine: American

Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

3 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1 cup peanuts

1 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)

1/4 cup Sucunat or organic sugar

1 cup peanut butter (preferably natural without added sugar)

1/2 cup honey

2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted

6 ounces chocolate chunks

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 275 degrees.  In a large bowl, mix together the first 5 ingredients.  Add in the remaining ingredients, except the chocolate chunks, and mix until everything is well mixed.  Spread the mixture on two rimmed baking sheets and bake in the preheated oven about 45 minutes.  Half way through the baking time, use a spatula to carefully turn the granola over to ensure it bakes evenly and doesn’t burn on the bottom. If you like big chunks in your granola, be careful not to break it apart too much as you are turning it over.

Watch the granola at the end of the baking time; it goes from perfect to burned quickly.  Once it is finished baking, let it sit, undisturbed, for at least an hour, more if possible.  It gets crunchier as it cools and the big chunks form when you don’t touch it at all.  Add the chocolate chunks and transfer it to an airtight container and store it in the pantry.  Enjoy!

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 0.5 cup
• Calories: 454
• Sugar: 19.6g
• Sodium: 103.8mg
• Fat: 32.6g
• Carbohydrates: 36.8g
• Protein: 8.6g

Keywords: peanut butter granola