Over the past 4 years or so, since a friend passed on this granola recipe to me – I have adapted and changed the recipe in various ways. The most recent experiment I have tried, is adding coconut oil & coconut syrup to substitute the sunflower oil & brown sugar. The end product still tastes amazing, and I’m limiting (or removing) sugar from breakfast. I have nothing against sugar, if it stays in my desserts!
With this granola recipe, I’d suggest starting with the original recipe to get a feel for it first, then experiment with various portions of the substitutions I have listed for you. Depending on the type and amount of binding products you use (rice malt, honey, coconut syrup, brown sugar), will depend on how clustered and chunky your granola will be. Just remember, you can’t go wrong with making granola – it’ll taste delicious every time. It’s so good, you could snack on it without adding any milk or yogurt!
Left to Right: Oats, Linseeds, Sunflower Seeds, Almonds (LSA)
Why would you bother?
If you’re as mad for granola as I am (and the rest of the family), you’ll also know that it’s one of the most expensive cereal types on the supermarket shelves, and the small box it comes in doesn’t last very long. By making your own, depending on which ingredients you choose to use, you can save a whopping 50% off the supermarket price (75% if you use no-name-brand oats).
When you consider that breakfast is one those regular things you do throughout your life, you can save a lot of money. For those who are interested in some quick calculations – here are some figures for you: If one person ate homemade granola cereal everyday for a year (which you wouldn’t), you’d save about $260pa. Just on cereal. Now multiply that by all your family members. For us, it’d be a saving of $780, if we ate it everyday (which we wouldn’t, but you get the idea).
Saving money isn’t the only benefit. You’d be in control of the various granola combinations, you can control the amount of sugars that you use, and you can control the amount of good stuff (nuts, seeds & fruits) you add. And if you need one more little reason, it feels soooo good to have made your own cereal.
Topped with dried cranberries & apricots.
Crunchy Breakfast Granola Recipe
Ingredients:
450g oats
250g sunflower seeds
2 tsp cinnamon
120g rice malt syrup
4 tbsp honey
100g brown sugar (sub. coconut syrup or more rice malt)
250g chopped almonds
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp sunflower oil (sub. coconut oil)
Additional options:
250g Linseed (blended).
By adding linseed, you have all 3 ingredients of the nutritious LSA – Linseed, Sunflower seeds & Almonds
Method:
1. Place an oven rack in the middle of the oven and turn oven on at 170 degrees C.
2. Place the sunflower oil (coconut oil), rice malt, honey and brown sugar (coconut syrup) in a small pot over the stove to melt and combine.
3. Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
4. Pour combined oil and sweeteners over the dry ingredients and mix well.
5. Spread out the granola in an oven tray and place in oven for 30 minutes, taking out at 15 minute mark to turn and mix granola for an even browning.
6. Leave in the tray to cool. Once cooled, break it up and store into tall glass jars.
Serve with:
Milk or yogurt. Your choice of extras – diced dried apricots, cranberries, coconut chunks or fresh raspberries & blueberries.
Ingredients notes:
Oats – Traditional Uncle Toby’s (not Quick oats), or no-name-brand oats
Coconut products – Banaban Organic
Rice Malt Syrup – Pure Harvest
If you have made your own granola before and have any other suggestions to add, please share it in the comments below, I’d love to hear it!
Styling notes:
Pink bowl and flower condiment bowl – Daiso
Small wooden board – Daiso
Just a word of warning if you are trying to limit sugars – honey, rice malt syrup and coconut syrup are essentially a liquid form of sugars. They may not have as much sucrose as cane sugar, but they are still high in sugars. Rice malt syrup (as an example) has 80g of sugars in every 100g of syrup. They do have some other nutritional value, but these are mostly trace elements in small amounts.
It’s something to be aware of, particularly for diabetics.
This looks like a very fab recipe… I will have to give it a go!