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Secret Recipe Club: Nutella Chocolate Chunk Granola Recipe
by Isabelle Boucher

It’s the first Monday of the month, which can only mean one thing ’round these parts… it’s Secret Recipe Club time again!

My blog this month is Cooking with Chopin, Living with Elmo, which is beautifully written and photographed by the talented Ginny. Aside from taking gorgeous photos and cooking delicious food, Ginny is also the mother of two adorable munchkins (hence the Elmo in her blog’s name).

As usual, I had a list of potential picks a mile long thanks to all the delicious-looking options in her archive, and must have bookmarked at least a dozen of her amazing chicken recipes, including Lemon-Brown Sugar Chicken and Braised Chicken with Oranges and Pistachios.

In the end, though, the calendar ended up making the decision for me… you see, tomorrow (February 5th) is World Nutella Day, which meant I had the perfect excuse to try out her recipe for Nutella Chocolate Chunk Granola.

And, as I’m sure most of you know by now, I never pass up a good excuse to eat Nutella.

My version recipe is basically the same as Ginny’s, only with a couple of small changes. I added a half-cup of wheat germ in a token attempt at making it healthier, and replaced the ground walnuts with a blend of roughly chopped walnuts and slivered almonds for added crunch and texture. I also used butter instead of coconut oil, mostly because that’s what I had on hand.

And by golly, it’s delicious. It’s not healthy, by any means, nor would I ever mistake it for part of a complete breakfast (I mean, it’s full of chocolate chunks, for crying out loud!).

I’ve been eating it sprinkled onto plain yogurt or with a splash of milk and sliced bananas, but mostly I’ve just been snagging it by the handful straight from the jar at every chance I get.

And while I probably don’t recommend eating it every day, but there is something to be said from the thrill of starting your day with a double dose of chocolate every once in a while… and I suppose it is ever so slightly healthier than eating cake for breakfast, right? Right.

Nutella and Chocolate Chunk Granola

This delicious granola gets a triple dose of chocolatey goodness from a combination of Nutella, cocoa powder and dark chocolate chunks. Prepare at your own risk – it’s dangerously addictive!

Ingredients

Instructions

Preheat oven to 275F, and line a large baking sheet with parchment.

In a larger mixing bowl, combine oats, almonds, walnuts, flax, wheat germ and salt. Set aside.

In a small saucepan. combine honey, Nutella, peanut butter and butter. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until butter is melted and the mixture is thick but pourable. Remove from heat and whisk in cocoa and vanilla, stirring until smooth. Immediately pour onto the dry ingredients, and stir together until oats are well coated and start to clump together.

Spread the granola onto the prepared baking sheet, being careful not to break up any clumps that have formed. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Gently stir the granola, trying to keep the clumps as intact as possible, then return to the oven to bake for another 20 minutes. Stir once more, then bake for 10 minutes longer.

Remove from oven and set aside to cool completely, about 1 hour. (If there are any really huge clumps in the granola, break them up into more manageable pieces now – the granola will still be a little chewy when you remove it from the oven, but will get crunchier as it cools.)

After the granola is completely cool, stir in the chocolate chunks and store in an airtight container.

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About the author

Isabelle Boucher

I'm a 30-something coffee-chugging, booty-shaking, bargain-shopping, cookbook-collecting, photo-snapping, trucker-swearing, farmers-market-loving self-taught cook with a Boy and two cats to feed.

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