Muesli...turned granola!

I just got back from a wonderful week at the beach with my entire family!  While there, my sister-in-law was using muesli instead of oats in an overnight oats recipe.  After trying it, I declared it delicious and decided it might be fun to try my hand at muesli when I got home.  I found a great muesli recipe from Everyday Maven and set to work making it, with a few modifications.  After a couple more discussions with my sister-in-law on why my muesli (while delicious) tasted so different from what I had at the beach we discovered we had actually been eating granola not muesli!  I found a great granola recipe from Kath Eats Real Food that I was ready to try, but I still had tons of muesli to get through.  That's when I decided to take my delicious muesli recipe and the granola recipe I was longing for and combine them...what resulted is heaven!

Ingredients:

Muesli Mixture
4 cups 100% Whole Grain 5 Grain Cereal (I used Old Wessex Ltd.)
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup wheat germ
3/4 cup chopped pitted dates
1/2 cup sweetened shredded coconut (unsweetened would work well too!)
1/2 cup chia seeds
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
2 Tbps. coconut palm sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. kosher salt

Granola Additions
1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp. honey
1/2 cup + 2 Tbps. coconut oil

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Combine the ingredients needed to make the muesli mixture in a large bowl.

Heat the honey in large pot until it warmed and thin (just a couple of minutes).  Add your muesli mixture to the pot and stir to combine.  Add in the coconut oil (it is solid, but spreadable at room temperature) and mix until the oil melts and it is combined with the muesli and honey.

Spread the mixture onto a shallow pan that has been coated in cooking spray.  Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.  Remove to stir the mixture.  Bake for 5 more minutes and once again remove and stir.  Bake for another 3 minutes then remove from the oven (without stirring) and let sit in the pan until cool.  Once the granola is cool you can store at room temperature in a sealed container.  I used large mason jars.