Healthy Granola - to suit you!

Everyone loves a healthy, tasty and filling breakfast...

...and the great thing about this granola recipe, is that you can tweak it to suit your own tastes and diet!

Your choice of seeds, nuts and dried fruit - you can switch around the ingredients every time you make it, so it's a little bit different.

Makes 30 portions (approximately 50g each), around 259 calories per portion. Easily halved. Keeps well in an airtight container or re-sealable sandwich bag. Very easy to make!

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp coconut oil, warmed up if necessary until liquid (or use sunflower or vegetable oil)
• 250ml/g natural sweetener of your choice, e.g. maple syrup, (raw) honey, agave syrup, golden syrup, or a combination
• 2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
• 600g rolled oats (or use gluten free oats)
• 300g seeds of your choice (I used a fairly equal combination of sunflower, linseeds, pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds)
• 200g nuts of your choice (flaked almonds are preferable, you don’t want anything too chunky, on this occasion I used chopped mixed nuts as that’s what I had to hand)
• 200g dried fruit/berries of your choice (I used a combination of sultanas and raisins, you can use anything, including chopped up dried apricots/prunes/dates/figs, dried cranberries, cherries… whatever you fancy!)
• 100g dessicated coconut, or coconut flakes (optional)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 150C. Mix together the oil, natural sweetener, vanilla extract and cinnamon. Add the oats, seeds and nuts and stir thoroughly until evenly combined.

2. Spread the mixture over three to four large (non-stick) baking trays (obviously, you can do this or two or more batches depending on your oven capacity or tray availability – I cooked mine in a square silicone cake tin, as I only had a small convection oven to use, and did it in four batches!!), you can use silicone coated baking paper to line them if you want to.

3. Cook for 15 minutes, remove and add the dried berries/fruit and coconut (if using). Stir thoroughly and put back into the oven for another 15 minutes, or until toasted and golden.

4. Remove from the oven, stir again, and spread onto a cold baking sheet/tray/large plate to cool down. Once cooled, put into an airtight container or re-sealable sandwich bag to store.

5. Great with milk, or topped with some chopped fruit/fresh berries with greek yoghurt.