Vanilla Walnut Raisin Granola

Recently I have been visiting a dietician and she happens to have a blog.  As I was perusing her different blog labels I saw one entitled "sugar free."  I jumped right on that, hoping there would be something yummy but still sugar free.  Success!!!  I made this granola today and it was delicious.  Here is a link to her exact recipe.  The most interesting thing was that she used raisins as the sweetener.  But with this recipe I didn't have to eat big chunks of raisins (which I loathe)!  First you soften the raisins by letting them simmer.

Here are some hard and crusty raisins in water.

Here they are after simmering for 30 minutes.  The only difference is the color.

Then I dumped the raisins and water into my magic bullet and got raisin paste.  Oooooooo.  That's what it looks like.  

Here is the granola after baking for an hour.  Either I needed to use a larger pan to spread the granola out more, or I just like it extra crispy.  Her recipe says 30 minutes, but I just baked it until it was done.  I did not put raisins in the granola itself since I don't like chomping down on a big raisin (see above).  The raisin paste is delicate enough that it tastes more cinnamony sweet then raisiny.  It smells delicious while baking too.  Best served over fruit, probably a baked apple (haven't tried it yet but it is on my list this weekend).