Peanut Butter Banana Granola and Strawberry Sauce Greek Yogurt Parfait

Whew. Now that you've spent a full minute comprehending the title alone...

This is amazing.
Wholesome.
Delicious.
Fancy.
and fast to make.

Aren't those happy adjectives?

So, today's a double post. The strawberry sauce is great over ice cream, by itself on a spoon (or on greek yogurt...think homemade fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt!).

The granola is fantastic in trail mix, as a cold or hot cereal, soaked overnight for muesli, with honey on top of granola, and sneaked (snook?) in handfuls from the container.

I wonder if that's how snookie got her nickname...

The layers are so pretty! Granola, yogurt, sauce, granola, yogurt, sauce, granola. Pick your ratios!

Common scents: make things that have multiple uses and store for a while. and make large quantities of them.

We happened to have a 4 pound box of strawberries begging to be used in ways other than cut up on cereal. Actually, we had 3 or 4 such boxes for a graduation breakfast (HOORAH I'm a high school graduate now!), but we ate a bunch, froze some, and gave some away.

This recipe, though, can hardly be considered precise. It doesn't matter if you have pounds and pounds of strawberries or just a pint or two. You can make it sweeter or not-as-sweet (I went the not-as-sweet route...it's been an eat-weekend), and flavor it as you like!

Morning mise en place

The granola is another great use for copious amounts of fruit: in this case, bananas. I've found that banana chunks that have been frozen are
a) usually riper and sweeter since we only freeze the really speckly bananas at my house
and b) easier to mash into a smooth puree once you defrost them in the microwave.

Oh hey sudoku! Sorry, but you're not as interesting as my parfait. It has layers.

It's a classy breakfast. You don't have to do the layers on a rushed weekday morning. No-muss, no fuss.

Strawberry Sauce (for homemade fruit-on-the-bottom for yogurt)


Ingredients:

Strawberries
Sugar (or honey or other sweetener)
Pinch salt
Lemon juice/zest or vanilla extract (or other flavorings...orange would also be lovely!)

Method:

1. Hull and quarter strawberries. Place in an appropriately sized saucepan over medium-high heat.
2. Add sweetener (a bit to start, you can add more later to taste), salt, and lemon juice/zest, if using.
3. Cook until the strawberries are your preferred doneness and the sauce is thickened, mashing with a potato masher or pureeing in a blender if you like (I mashed by hand). Check the seasonings as you go--have lots of spoons ready!--and add sweetener to taste. My sauce took 20-30 minutes.
4. Add vanilla (if using) at the end of cooking so it doesn't evaporate off.
5. Let cool and store in the fridge (a mason jar works great!)

Common Scents Baking "original" (yeah, I threw some stuff in a pot on the stove...)

Peanut Butter Banana Granola

Ingredients:

3 cups rolled oats, oat bran, and wheat germ (I used 2 1/2 cups oats and 1/4 cup of each of the other two)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Scant 1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup mashed banana (2-3 medium)
1/4 cup peanut butter

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and line a baking sheet (one that has edges will keep the granola contained better) with parchment paper
2. Whisk together dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Microwave to melt the honey, oil, and peanut butter, add bananas and mash/mix to combine.
4. Stir together wet and dry until combined, then pour on to baking sheet and press down (this makes clumpy granola--yum!)
5. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 or 15 minutes so the edges don't burn more than the middle. Keep baking until your desired crunch level!

Note: The big chunks are great for snacking and trail mix, and the littler chunks are good for stirring into yogurt!

Adapted from my Pumpkin Granola recipe (my first ever post!), which was adapted from Serious Eats.