High Protein Granola Recipe

So if you're on my insta or fb, you'll notice that I make a wide variety of things besides cookies such as various dinners, desserts, healthy snacks, breakfast foods and I've considered posting them on here. One of these things is High Protein Granola. Now I started making this because I used to buy the store bought high protien granola and it was delicious.....until I looked at the nutrition facts. I was absolutely shocked to see the sugar content. It was sometimes double or triple the amount of protein in each serving which was making it high sugar not high protien.

So after many trials and errors I came up with my own recipe. One that I could make in bulk because lets face it....my fiance likes to eat the crap out of it. AND I can control the sugar so here it is in all its glory.

P.S. Read the notes for some tips on making it

High Protein Granola Recipe

Ingredients:

6 Cups Oats

3 Cups raw Walnuts

1.5 Cups raw Pumpkin Seeds

1.5 Cups Flax Seed

3 TBSP Chia Seeds

1.5 Cups Protien powder (I use vanilla ISO whey protien)

1 TBSP of cinnamon (you can use less if you don't like cinnamon)

2 tsp salt

1 Cup Honey

1 Cup Olive Oil

2-3 tbsp flavouring or extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 F and line a pan with foil.

2. Mix all dry ingredients thoroughly in a bowl

3. Add wet ingredients starting with oil first and fold in.

4. make a layer of granola on your foil lined tray place in the oven for 15-20 minutes taking them out 1 or 2 times to mix

5. When granola is golden brown, let it cool completely and store in an airtight tuppaware.

Some things to note about this recipe, I typically make mine with crushed walnuts. They’re cheaper if you can go to someplace like sprouts and buy them in bulk. You can also substitute any mix of cashews and almonds halves. Just realize cashews have more fat in them.

Also, this recipe is on the healthier side of the sweet scale. Meaning if you’d like it sweeter, just add a little extra honey to your bowl when you go to eat it. And while I’m on the subject, 1 cup seems like a lot of honey but it roughly comes out to 5grams of sugar or less per serving when I calculated it. Look at the back of store bought granola then come thank me lol.

As for the flavouring, I use vanilla or if I have extra, vanilla bean paste. This is just my preference but almond, hazelnut, and even butter flavouring all taste pretty darn good.

Lastly, when you go to mix it, my advice would be to add the oil to the dry mix in a big blob, then add honey in a similar blob like fashion otherwise it’s a pain to get the honey off your measuring cup and fold in. I’ve tried it multiple ways, this one is the less messy and it mixes thoroughly.

This is in total should make about a cereal box full and is great with fresh berries and milk, ice cream, or as a snack.

Anyways. Hope you like it and let me know if you have any questions!

To Airbrush Or Not To Airbrush?

First of all, what is Airbrushing? How does it work?

Below you'll see the airbrush set up I have. The big block thing is the compressor, attached to it is the white hose then you'll see the gun itself. How it works is you put food colouring in the in the gun and force air through the hose and into the gun so it sprays the colour onto the cookie.

A lot of people use airbrushes because they want certain patterns like dots, lines...etc on their cookies or to give it a special touch.

The problem with airbrushes is that they can be quite costly. Think about it, a typical airbrush machine is typically in the $100+ range. You also have to buy stencils, possibly a stencil genie (that pink frame thing in the picture above), special airbrush colours.....and it all adds up.

This brings me to my next, point. While airbrushing is nice, we have so many food friendly alternatives available such as edible art paint, luster dusts, or certain techniques that can give us similar effects of airbrushing. To give you an idea of what I mean, the onesie cookie and pencil cookies below are an example of wet on wet technique where the fruit slices are painted on. The onesie cookie didn't cost me any more because I just used icing. The edible art paint may cost 8$ a tube that lasts over a year. All of which are more cost effective than buying an airbrush and it's accompanying stuff. There are a TON of options out there so to be quite honest, if you want to save yourself some money, try some of those methods instead.

If your DO want to airbrush cookies, then I highly recommend doing your research. There are a bunch of airbrushes out there. I happen to have the ADC single action airbrush and I LOOOOOOVE it. But I only settled on this one after researching the pros and cons of a bunch of them. I also found this amazing video on YouTube by Baking Sweet Hope where she does a side by side comparison and the ADC airbrush was to me the best option.

Along with your airbrush, I highly recommend purchasing a nottacookie, a stencil genie and good reliable airbrush colours.

A Nottacookie is that fake cookie looking thing on the left. It's a round thick cookie-like piece of plastic that is great for practicing. And when I say practice I don't only mean with an airbrush. You can frost it, practice writing on it, try new techniques...and guess what?! When you're done with it, just wash it off in warm water and start again! With airbrushing itself, it's really good for testing to see if your airbrush is spitting or flowing evenly, and it's great for practicing how close to get to the cookie.

The middle item is a stencil genie. They are super handy. Just pop your stencil in the middle of them (they're magnetic) and it stays in place. Now there are several ones you can buy. Sweet Sugarbelle makes one that changes sizes, some people use magnets on the back of a baking sheet, I prefer the stencil genie. It's small and easy to store.

As for the last item, those are airbrush colours. Do not try and put your regular gel food colouring you use to tint icing in your airbrush. It's only going to clog it and make it spit as well as make a big mess. Invest in some decent airbrush colours. I use these cookie countess colours but Amerimist (americolor brand) colours are also good. A really important tip I will tell you about all airbrush colours I've tried is, store the bottles upright. They leak. EVERYWHERE. Don't make the same mistake I made. That all being said, if you really are in a pinch and need airbrush colours and don't have any, thin out your gel colouring with everclear or vodka and you can use that. (then drink the rest of the bottle when you realize how much of a mess airbrushing is and have to clean it)

Now when it comes to stencils, There are 2 types, the regular plastic ones and silk screen.

The plastic stencils are overall more common and you can get from them several places like Killer Zebras, Cookie Countess among others. The problem with plastic stencils is that they need to hold together somehow and plastic isn't bendy. so if you're airbrushing a word, you'll be able to see the breaks in the words/letters as they curve like in this stencil from Cookie countess.

Another stencil option you have is silkscreen stencils. They are less common and a little pricier but they work REALLY REALLY well. Especially for Paint Your Own (PYO) cookies, words, and logos. These cookies for example have the words silk screened on. I would never been able to achieve this level of consistency for these cookies without my silkscreen stencil.

The way this works is similar to punching a hold in a piece of fabric. The fabric is still going to be able to hold its shape but underneath it is a piece of sticky vinyl that makes sure to keep everything together seamlessly. I'll have to do a separate video about this because it's hard to explain but they're wonderful and customizable. Regardless, like I said they ARE pricier (13$ a stencil) so I only get them when I have orders over 50 cookies and need their precision and I charge the customer for them. As a side note, I happen to get mine from Donna who owns Sweetstuffshopppe on Etsy.

Okay so now you know about the machine I use, the accessories I have, is it all worth it? Short answer, no. I have owned my airbrush machine for over a year and I really think I've used it.....MAYBE 10 times. It's a pain in the bootay to clean, I've bent the needle in doing so, and I use a lot of wet on wet techniques to achieve the same concept on the cookie. That being said, I'm starting to do more and more fairs and markets that need more mass production. Because of this, I probably will end up using it more for the text work on my cookies as it speeds things up considerable than writing "Happy Easter" by hand on 100+ cookies.

As for where I bought my airbrush, I worked with my favourite tool supplier, Yoli from etsy who put together an AWESOME package that contained all the things above including some extra stencils. No, she is not paying me to advertise for her, I just love how fast with shipping she is and how reliable/affordable she makes her stuff. Regardless where you get all your airbrushing stuff, don't be afraid to ask for a package deal. Often times, it'll be more affordable than buying everything individually.

Hopes this sheds light on the airbrushing question. Stay tuned for the How To post next time!

Proper Pricing

Hi Cookie Lovers,

I must be on a pricing kick or something because last week I talked about how to make money from cookies and this week I'm talking about pricing cookies themselves. I just think it's important is all!

So pricing. If you've read my How to Make a Living on Cookies post, you'll remember I started out charging 2$ per cookie. That's not a lot but as a beginner, I had to charge accordingly for my skill set. As I learned new techniques and purchased new equipment, I realized that there are several factors that should go into the price of a cookie and that other pricing models I found didn't break it down or charge as I would have liked so I created my own model that factors in the following:

Amount of Colours

Hand Painting

Air Brushing

Text

Hand Cutting

Wrapping

Packaging

Delivery

Allergies

Cookie Size

All of these things take time and effort. If a cookie has more than 3 colours, that's more time mixing frosting. If it has gold or silver accents, I have to wait for the cookie to completely dry then individually paint them on. If I have to use an airbrush, I have to purchase the stencil, the colours and clean the machine (which is not fun) afterwards.....and so on and so forth.

But while these all play a factor, I also wanted to give my customers fair prices for what they want and to me, charging for the dozen to me seems a little unfair. For example say you have an assorted dozen cookies that normally would run 36$ but because you have to put gold on a couple of them, they fall into the higher pricing category of $42 a dozen. To me this doesn't justify charging 3.50 for each cookie when I could have charged you that extra cost for those 3 special ones.

Also, What if a person only needs 15 cookies? or can only afford 6? I wanted my prices to be easy to understand and fair for people of all price points. Therefore, in most cases I charge per cookie using a 3 tier approach for regular cookies and a 2 tier for minis. See below:

Regular Sized Pricing

Mini Sized Pricing

The only thing I DON'T have listed on here is gluten or almond free which is .50$ add on to any cookie.

To me, this is fair and clear about what you get for your money and thus far it has worked very well. The prices are competitive and it really helps me as the baker think before I put too much effort into a cookie that hasn't paid for that type of service. (an issue a baking friend of mine said she had).

Now this being said, once I've made an assortment of cookies, I know how much time and effort goes into each dozen and I can come up with a justification for a set price per dozen. This is why on my purchasing section of the website, you can order cookies by the dozen that have a fixed price. Once you make something, it's easier to make again (IN MOST CASES).

However all things considered, this is what works for me. Other bakers like Sweet Sugarbelle charge on the size of the cookie in addition to other things. Others charge overall per dozen like Issa Cookies with additional costs. For me, keeping it simple and per cookie with my very clear pricing chart is what works.

Hopefully this sheds some light into my particular pricing structure and helps you figure out yours.

Keep on Cookie-ing!

-Ashley