Clean Eat Recipe: Gluten Free Cinnamon Vanilla Granola

Making your own granola is super easy. Like really easy. It's much less expensive and you know exactly what is in it! We love to make granola before going on our hiking trips. You can also make it to add to your yogurt for breakfast! Just be careful with the serving size - it's really easy to over-eat. I just made a batch of this to take on our most recent trip to San Diego and it didn't even make it past the first day, let alone on the hiking trail!

RELATED: Gluten Free Power Granola

Clean Eat Recipe: Gluten Free Cinnamon Vanilla Granola

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Gluten Free Rolled Oats
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp Sea Salt
• 1/2 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract (avoid HFCS)
• 1/4 cup Pure Maple Syrup
• 2 Tbsp Coconut Oil, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper
3. Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl
4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredient mixture and stir to combine (I used a fork)
5. Spoon out mixture onto lined baking sheet
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until desired crispness

Make Your Own Cookie Butter

This is amazing. We've experimented with many different nut combinations in the Vitamix and this is - hands down - our favorite so far! It doesn't last long in our house and we can't make very much at one time or we will eat it all! :-) It tastes like cookie butter to me so if you haven't already, invest in a Vitamix (they are worth it - we make our juice in it too!), and start creating your own nut butters at home!

P.S. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this but I texted my friend Kenzie (of Hettman Homestead) that I hated the picture I took for this post. She dropped what she was doing and had her own photo shoot for my nut butter and then sent me the pics to use! How awesome is she?! That's why these pics are so good. ;-)

Oh, and we have a little secret, we just finished our newest eCookbook! The majority of the book is filled with flavorful oatmeal recipes, but we also included a handful our favorite casseroles! You will be getting brand new recipes, never posted before on the site plus our tried and true (reader favorites) like Apple Cinnamon Steel Cut Oats and Overnight Peaches and Cream Steel Cut Oats. Click here to learn more!

Clean Eat Recipe: Cookie Butter

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups whole cashews (can be more or less, just ensure you have 3 cups total)
• 1.5 cups whole pecans (can be more or less, just ensure you have 3 cups total)
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 1 Tbsp pure maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp oil (we used an oil blend that contained red palm oil but other oils should work as well)

Directions:

1. Roast the nuts:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place nuts on baking sheet, careful not to overlap. Bake for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, shake the nuts and bake for another 2-4 minutes, checking often to avoid burning. Note: these will burn easily so do not leave them unattended! After roasting the nuts let them completely cool.

2. After the nuts have cooled completely, add them the Vitamix
3. Using these directions (adapted from Blender Lady), process your nut butter:

• Turn your Vitamix on high. The nuts will turn into a powder (and fluff up a bit). As soon as the mix is not “fluffing up” anymore, and the powder is starting to fall into the middle (this only takes seconds) begin to use your tamper LIBERALLY. Push the tamper into each corner, going from corner to corner, over and over.
  • In the beginning, keep the tamper in the corners and do not push down in the middle or the the motor can overheat.
• Slowly you will see the nut butter forming at the bottom of the container and working its way up. When there is very little or no powder left, but it still isn’t creamy smooth, try to plug up the air pocket by plunging the tamper down into the middle, and holding it down in there.  IF you get it right, you will hear a sudden, low growl. If you keep the tamper all of the way down into the container, in the middle, and let it growl for about 5-10 seconds at the most, you should get a really creamy, smooth nut butter.
  • This advice is exactly the opposite of what was stated earlier about keeping the tamper out of the middle, but it is something only done right at the end - after all of the powder is gone and only for about 10 seconds MAX in order to get the nut butter REALLY smooth and creamy. If you are concerned about the “low growl” sound, here is a helpful post to put your mind at ease.

4. Add oil, maple syrup, and sea salt and blend for a few more seconds.
5. Once your nut butter is finished you can taste test to see if anything else is needed to suit your taste buds. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

We hope you love this as much as we do! We enjoy it on toast (using Ezekiel bread or Canyon Bakehouse), added to protein shakes/smoothies, or just straight out of the container!

Cauliflower Risotto

This recipe turned out even better than we expected. Seriously. Scott still talks about it and talked about it the entire weekend we made it. He told me the other day that it is one of his top three favorite recipes we've ever created. I guess that means it's pretty good! And now that I'm writing about it, I want to go back into the kitchen to make another batch!

We were excited to take on this at home challenge from Sargento® to create a comfort food recipe using ingredients that we would have probably otherwise skipped over: cauliflower, crimini mushrooms, and leeks! Scott and I talked about what kind of recipe we wanted to create and agreed on giving risotto a try. We've experimented with cauliflower instead of rice before so we knew that we wanted to incorporate that into the recipe but we weren't quite sure how it would turn out. Honestly, we even had a "back up" recipe to make if this one wasn't good enough! Needless to say, our back up wasn't needed.

Don't let the list of ingredients and steps scare you off, it is easy to make and is well worth the minimal effort! Hopefully this will inspire you to create your own recipe and enter it into the Chopped At Home Challenge! Submit your recipe to FoodNetwork.com/ChoppedChallenge for the chance to win $5,000 and a trip to New York City to compete in a televised Chopped cooking challenge for a $10,000 grand prize!

For this recipe we used Sargento mild cheddar cheese (fine cut). Sargento is available in 30 versatile varieties, unique blends and distinct cuts. Sargento Shredded Cheese is always cut from blocks of 100% real, natural cheese.

Clean Eat Recipe: Cauliflower Risotto

Ingredients:

• "Rice" - 1 head of organic cauliflower, medium size, chopped
• White wine vinegar
• 1/8 tsp garlic
• 1/8 tsp sea salt
• 1/8 tsp black pepper
• 1 large organic leek
• 1 cup of crimini mushrooms
• 1 cup Sargento mild cheddar cheese (fine cut)
  • ¾ cup for the recipe + ¼ to sprinkle on top

For cream sauce:

• 1 head of organic cauliflower, medium size, chopped
• 2 cups organic, low sodium chicken broth
• 1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp (pinch) nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp (pinch) black pepper
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 cup cottage cheese
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 Tbsp olive oil

Directions:

Make cream sauce as listed in our previous post:

1. Boil chicken broth. Add chopped cauliflower and spices. Cook 20 minutes until cauliflower is soft.
2. Remove from heat and allow mixture to cool (approximately 5-10 minutes).
3. Blend mixture in blender (Be CAREFUL! Hot liquid expands). Add cottage cheese, water and olive oil and blend again.
4. Return to pot to simmer on low for approximately 5 minutes.

While cream sauce is cooling:

1. Chop second cauliflower into small florets. Place small amounts at a time into the food processor to finely chop (use the pulse feature) into "rice"
2. Cut leeks into quarter-sized slivers and halve mushrooms
3. Coat skillet with cooking oil spray (we used avocado oil) and sauté leeks and mushrooms with a drizzle of white wine vinegar (1/4 tsp). Add sea salt, black pepper and garlic powder, making sure to stir often to prevent burning
4. If you haven't already, place cream sauce back in sauce pan and simmer on low heat while sautéing vegetables
5. Once sautéed (leeks are translucent), add cauliflower "rice" to skillet with small portion (up to ½ cup) of cream mixture and simmer for two minutes
6. Gradually add the remaining creamy cauliflower sauce while stirring often
7. After adding all of the cream sauce, cover and let simmer on low-medium heat for 6 minutes. Check often to prevent burning.
8. Fold in ¾ cup of Sargento mild cheddar cheese (fine cut), simmer for two more minutes
9. Serve with ¼ cup sprinkled cheese on top and add sea salt if desired

Will you be entering the Chopped At Home Challenge? If so, what recipe do you plan on creating?

For more inspiration, check out the Sargento Pinterest page Pinterest.com/sargentocheese/ or visit www.sargento.com/Shredded for more information.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Sargento. The opinions and text are all mine.