Breakfast · Granola & cereal

Maple almond granola

Name: Maple almond granola
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 10 servings
Ingredients: 3 3/4 cups oatmeal; 1 cup almonds, roughly chopped; 1/2 cup dried pumpkin seeds; 1/4 cup maple syrup; 3 tbsp coconut oil, melted; 1 tsp vanilla extract; 1 tsp ground cinnamon; 1/2 tsp salt

The jar on the counter that quietly outpaces every cereal box: oats and almonds toasted in maple until they clump. It is dense stuff — a portion is 50 g, not a bowlful — and it earns its place by what it does to a bowl of yogurt rather than by what it scores alone.

Time: 40 min (10 prep + 30 cook)
Servings: 10
Per serving: 289 kcal
Protein: 8 g

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups oatmeal300 g
1 cup almonds, roughly chopped120 g
1/2 cup dried pumpkin seeds60 g
1/4 cup maple syrup90 g
3 tbsp coconut oil, melted45 g
1 tsp vanilla extract5 g
1 tsp ground cinnamon3 g
1/2 tsp salt2 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Heat the oven to 160°C (325°F) — low and slow, because maple burns long before oats are done.
Whisk the maple syrup, melted coconut oil, vanilla and salt together, then fold through the oats, almonds, seeds and cinnamon until nothing is dry.
Press the mixture flat on a lined tray. Pressing is the whole trick: loose granola toasts into gravel, packed granola breaks into clusters.
Bake 25–30 minutes, turning the tray once but not stirring, until evenly golden.
Cool completely on the tray without touching it. It crisps as it cools; break it into clusters only when cold.

Why is the score lower than my yogurt's?

Granola is dry, fatty and sweet — about 460 kcal per 100 g, so satiety per calorie was never going to be its strength. It is a topping that earns its keep in tablespoons over something bulky, not a bowl of its own.

Mine never clumps.

Two causes: stirring during baking, and breaking it up while warm. Press it flat, turn the tray instead of the granola, and leave it alone until it is stone cold.

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

12% of kcal

3% water

17 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

14%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 2891 kcal goes into the pot, 625 g of ingredients comes out as ~560 g of food → 516 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 516
Protein: (12%); 15 g
Fat: (48%); 28 g
Carbohydrates: (41%); 53 g
of which sugar: 11 g
Fiber: 9 g
Sodium: 365 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More breakfast

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.