Granola heads take note: Local granola girl Laura Slama’s four-year-old Tempe-based company, Laura’s Gourmet Granola, just introduced a fourth flavor, Applelicious Crunch. Applelicious?
“I wanted to call it Dutch Apple Crunch, but my daughter said I should call it ‘applelicious’ because it’s so delicious. How can I argue with that?” asks the high-energy Scottsdale Culinary graduate, who launched her company after turning a granola recipe she found in a magazine into a more healthful product.
“I loved that granola but didn’t love all the sugar and fat,” she says.
So, after much testing and tweaking, Slama developed Vanilla Almond Crunch, creating a wholesome snack that, along with her other flavors, is distributed in Arizona, Texas and southern California, with plans for full national distribution in the works. The other two flavors are Pumpkin Pecan Crunch and Honey Roasted Peanut Crunch. A serving size of Laura’s Gourmet Granola (1/2 cup) is 200 calories and high in fiber and complex carbohydrates.
Applelicious Crunch is the company’s first nut-free granola (although Slama stresses that it’s still made in a kitchen that makes the nutty granolas). Like the first three flavors, the Applelicious Crunch ingredient list is short, consisting mostly of whole oats, moist cubes of dried apple, brown sugar and plenty of cinnamon. Laura’s Gourmet Granola (roughly $7 a pound) is available at AJ’s Fine Foods, Whole Foods and Chloe’s Corner at Kierland Commons.