Protein-Packed Cacao Granola!

For granola that crunches and munches in all the healthy ways, we have got you covered with protein-packed cacao granola!

Here’s the deal: cacao is the raw form of chocolate. Cacao is the HEALTHY form of chocolate. It grows on trees in football-like colorful pods. When you open a cacao pod, you’ll find huge seeds inside that are called cacao beans even though they’re seeds (weird but just go with it). If you dry the beans, remove their skin and press on them a bit, they crumble naturally into….NIBS!! (Gotta love cacao nibs.)

But ferment the nibs, grind them up, extract the fat (aka cacao butter) and you’ll get yourself some decadent cacao powder! Which is chock full of antioxidants and minerals – especially iron and magnesium. (And is not the same thing as cocoa – not just in its spelling. Cocoa is heated and also has sugar and other crap added to it, cacao is unadulterated awesome.)

K, so clearly, consuming chocolate by way of cacao is how you can justify calling chocolate “healthy.” And this truly amazing, easy to make, high in plant-protein, quinoa-based CACAO GRANOLA is how you can justify eating chocolate for breakfast.