Sometimes I feel like a nut…

Whelp.  I’ve done it.  I’ve finagled another way to save money again.

Except this has gone a little far.  I mean, seriously, making your own Grape Nuts at home?  Why on earth would you take the trouble to do that?

Unless of course you have a family of 6 with kids that happen to adore this Box o’ Rocks.  But what children, other than yours truly, actually find pleasure in this cereal?

Yep.  As I was growing up alongside my brother, he reached for the Fruity Pebbles – the Cocoa Puffs – the Smacks – Count Chocula.  Me?  Pass me some Grape Nuts or a giant brick of shredded wheat and I’m good to go.

And later, I’ll snack on a salmon patty.

Nowadays, I just use the Grape Nuts to add a crunch to my yogurt.  And to reduce my yearly visits to the dentist since I’m pretty sure they do an awesome job scaling my teeth. 

But seriously.  The savings for me are absolutely nominal.  Grape Nuts exist as just an accent in my life.  But for your family of 6 tree-hugging-hippies, I’ve included the dollar breakdown so you can estimate your savings start to finish:

-22.5 cups in a 5 lb bag of flour
$2.78 for 5 lbs of WW flour
3.5 cups for the recipe = 0.156 of the bag

$0.43 = the cost of flour.

16 cups of milk in 1 gallon, 1/8 of a gallon, 1 gallon costs $3.00
$0.36 = cost of milk

Baking powder, vinegar, brown sugar, vanilla extract are pantry staples.  So, let’s just say $0.10 for the lot.

$0.90 for the Grapenuts batch.

There are about 7 cups of cereal in a 24 oz box of generic Grape nuts “Crunchy Nuggets”  This cost $2.88 + tax, or about $0.42/cup of Crunchy Nuggets.  Actual Grape Nuts cost $4.29 / box, so they are $0.61 /cup.

My batch made 6.5 cups, so $0.14 a cup for homemade Grape Nuts.

That’s a savings of just over 66% over Crunchy Nuggets and 77% over Grape Nuts.

Wow!  But seriously?  I just sprinkle it on my yogurt like 4x per week.  So I don’t make it for the price savings (…or do I?).

Clearly, I make it for the nostalgia.  Afterall, they just don’t make Grape Nuts like they used to (or do they?).

I make my breakfast at home! (6.5 cups of cereal, adapted from here)
3.5 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups milk
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 T vinegar
1/2 t salt
1 t baking soda

Combine flour with baking soda and salt.  Add vanilla and vinegar to milk and incorporate wet and dry ingredients to form a dough.

Spread the dough onto a greased sheet pan to a thickness of 1/4″ and bake in a preheated 375* oven for 30 minutes.

Let the finished product cool for 30 minutes.  Whack the cooked loaf on the counter to release the dough.  Break the dough into small pieces with your hands.

Spread the torn bits (that should be the size of…um, lemme think, smaller than a golf ball but larger than a marble) onto two sheet pans and return to a 300* oven for an hour.  Stir the mixture every 15 minutes so that it dries evenly.  At the 45 minute mark, give it all a whirl in your food processor and return to the oven for 15 more minutes to completely dry.