Home-made Granola

My husband eats muesli almost every morning for breakfast. Unfortunately the kids and I don't touch it. "Unfortunately" because it is extremely good for you but I just can't swallow it and prefer my overly sugared, easily digestible, cereals instead. There is one thing we all eat and that is granola. Unfortunately (again) it is difficult to get good granola here in Germany. When you can get it, it has one of the following problems: it contains desiccated coconut (yuck!), it contains chocolate chunks (not for breakfast, no way!) or it is extremely expensive. So once we moved to Germany I had to start making granola at home. I haven't made it recently and I don't know why because it is very simple to make. But the muesli ran out yesterday and my hubby needs his fiber. [If you are wondering what happened today, well it was a public holiday so we had toast and fried eggs instead of cereal!]

So I made some this afternoon and figured I would share the recipe. Now I didn't come up with this recipe myself. The initial version was copied from a website and I no longer know which one so I can't cite it. But I think I've changed the recipe enough that it would be okay to post it again.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (300 g)	Brown Sugar
1/2 cup (150 ml)	Water
2 tsp	Vanilla Extract
1 tsp	Salt
8 cups (800 g)	Oats
1 cup	Sunflower Seeds
300 g	Sliced Almonds
200 g	Dried Cranberries

Method:

Set your fan oven to 120°C (conventional oven around 140°C / 280°F)

First mix together the brown sugar, water, vanilla and salt in a microwavable bowl. Some times I don't have brown sugar, or am frankly too stingy to pay the price for it. So instead I use white sugar with a teaspoon of "Goldsaft" which is something like molasses. You can use any type of syrup to make your sugar brown. If you are in Sri Lanka you could use coconut treacle, for example.

Stir a bit to combine and then put the bowl in the microwave and heat for 3 minutes. (Alternatively you could do this on a stove top.)

While the mixture is heating measure out the oats, sunflower seeds and the almonds, put them in a large mixing bowl and combine. In actual fact it does not matter what type of nuts you use. I could imagine that cashew nuts would taste wonderful as probably would peanuts. It's all a matter of taste and availability. This time I didn't have the usual sliced almonds but instead I had chopped almonds and some walnuts so that is what will be in our granola. You also don't have to worry too much about how much you put it. It is really all a matter of taste.

Carefully take your bowl out of the microwave and stir until all the sugar etc. is dissolved.

Then pour it over your oat nut mixture and mix till well combined.

Then spread the oats equally onto two baking trays lined with parchment paper. You can skip the parchment paper if you like, you will just have more to clean up. I don't think the oats will stick to your baking sheet. Make sure everything is evenly spread so that you ensure that your granola is crunchy

and stick it in the oven for about 45 minutes. After 45 minutes take out the trays, one at a time, and mix (turn) the granola so that it gets evenly  baked. Bake for a further 45 until crisp.

While the granola is baking chop the cranberries because they are a bit too big. Again like the nuts you can use any type of dried fruits for the granola. I had a half finished bag of cranberries and one of raisins so that is what went in today.

Once the granola is done, mix in the dried fruit and it is ready to eat. I can't tell you how long it keeps, we finish it within a week but I'm guessing you can keep it longer :)