Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola #Recipe by @LibbyKlein #Gluten-Free #Dairy-Free

  Libby Klein I have had a long love affair with Peanut Butter. It's one of my favorite foods and I'll look for ways to get it into a recipe. We've been on a granola kick in my house lately. I blame the yogurt bowls. It was only a matter of time before I thought about peanut butter granola. The addition of dark chocolate makes this more of a desserty thing than a breakfasty thing in my book. That doesn't keep me from eating it at eight o'clock in the morning though. Like Poppy said, "Oatmeal cookies for breakfast just sounds reasonable." Are you a peanut butter lover like I am? Let me know in the comments.

Gluten-Free Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Granola

Yield: About 5 cups

Ingredients

4 cups gluten-free old-fashioned or quick cooking oats

1 tsp sea salt
¾ cup peanut butter
½ cup honey
¼ cup melted refined coconut oil
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
½ bag Enjoy Life chocolate chips or 1 cup dairy free dark chocolate, chopped

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. 

In a small bowl, mix together oats and salt. Set aside

In a microwave safe dish, melt the peanut butter, honey and coconut oil together. Stir until smooth. Add in the vanilla.

Stir in oats and salt. Mix until well combined.

Spread mixture on a cookie sheet.

Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until granola is lightly browned. You can stir it half way through for even baking. Take it out and let cool until you can handle it. If you don't think it's crispy enough, break apart into chunks and put back in the oven to toast it for another 5-10 minutes.

Remove from oven and let sit until cooled. Add the chocolate chips when totally cool if you want them not to melt. If you want them to melt a little, add them when the granola is still warm.

My husband had found the granola and was well on his way to polishing off the entire jar. It's very tasty! 

Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister and her aunt Ginny are looking forward to a quiet, homey Christmas at their B&B in Cape May, but unfortunately, death isn’t taking a holiday this year . . .

Ever since Thanksgiving, Poppy and her pals have been left with an unsolved mystery of the romantic kind. But at least this mystery isn’t the kind that involves murder. That all changes when the body of a fish supplier is discovered in the kitchen of her ex’s restaurant—and he’s frozen, not fresh.

For once, it’s not Poppy who tripped over the corpse, yet she can’t escape being drawn in since the victim has a note taped to him reading Get Poppy. Figures—an engagement ring isn't labeled, but the dead guy is addressed to her. Now, while Aunt Ginny plans a tree-trimming party and pressures Poppy to decode a mysterious old diary, the amateur sleuth is asked to “unofficially” go undercover at the restaurant to help the police. Until then, the only crime Poppy had been dealing with was Figaro’s repeated thefts of bird ornaments from the tree; now it looks like it’s going to be a murder-y Christmas after all.

 

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/