I love my granola in the morning, the brand I usually buy has quite a lot of red fruit mixed in with the yummy granola clusters. What I don’t like that much though is the amount of cane sugar, glucose sugar, sugar cane molasses and then some more sugar it contains.  Each 50 gr. serving has about 10 grams of sugar in it.  I’m not quite sure how that makes the granola that healthy….  so time to try and make my own.  When surfing the net, I came across hundreds different recipes and methods to make this, so I had to try and figure out what the reoccurring pattern was exactly.  After plenty of surfing, reading and a trip to the supermarket this is what came out of my oven:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of oat flakes
• 1/2 cup crushed almonds
• 1/2 sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and crushed pistachios
• a handful of dried cranberries, cut in half
• a handful of cashew nuts, hazelnuts and walnuts
• 1.5 table spoons unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons honey
• pinch of salt
• pinch of vanilla sugar (homemade)

Method:

Preheat your oven to 175 degreed Celsius and line a baking tin with baking paper.

In mean time, measure 2 cups of oat flakes, and poor in a large mixing bowl.  Take your 1/2 cup of almonds and crush these. Repeat the same with the cashew nuts, hazelnuts and walnuts.  Add to the large mixing bowl.  Also add on the sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and crushed pistachios.  Mix all well and toast in the lined baking tin for 10 -15 min in the oven, stirring occasionally.  I promise, this smells great (this is to hide the fact I forgot to take photos of this step…  smart me)

While your nuts and flakes are roasting away, you now have time for the mixture that will hold the granola bars together.  Take a small saucepan and put on a medium to high heat.  Add on the butter, honey and a pinch of salt and vanilla sugar.  Let this all melt and mix until it starts to boil. Then carefully, take off the heat and set aside.  This will be the ‘glue’ that will keep the granola together. (forgot to take photos of this too…duh)

When sufficiently roasted to golden brown take your baking tin out of the oven and transfer the mixture with the baking paper, onto a flat baking tray.  On this, carefully poor the honey, butter, salt and vanilla sugar melange, and mix well together.  Mix that well, that all the nuts, seeds and oat flakes are well coated and sticky.  Don’t forget to add on the cranberries too.  Now flatten the mix with a spatula by pressing down and spreading it out on the baking tray. This will go back into the oven at 160 degrees Celsius for approx 15 to 20 min.

When baked sufficiently, take the granola bar out of the oven and leave to cool down entirely.  At this point I didn’t have the patience to actually cut the bars in neat even well…bars, so I kind of broke off larger pieces to serve as bars, for on the go.  What was left or had already fallen off, that I broke in smaller pieces as granola clusters for when I do have time for breakfast.

Did you try these and like them?  What other fruit would you add on?