Make/Bake 9: Homemade Granola

Sunday was a sleepy day, M woke up with the dreaded Man Flu and I had a nasty backache which necessitated a day on the sofa watching TV. After a hectic Saturday I hadn't had time to make anything new and that I was feeling glum as baking is one of my favourite things to do on a weekend so I set about to think of something to make which didn't involve too much effort.

I struggle to eat breakfast most mornings as I never really feel like eating first thing so I thought I'd make something which might tempt me to be more healthy rather than grabbing a cereal bar or bag of crisps so Granola it was! for this new make/bake I adapted a recipe from Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food. I've only tried one recipe from the book and thought it deserved another whirl!

I preheated the oven to 180°C and then I mixed 200g of Porridge oats (mine had added wheatgerm) with 100g of mixed seeds ( an Omega mix which includes pumpkin seeds, linseeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds), 100g dessicated coconut , 1 tsp cinnamon, 5 tbsp Rapeseed Oil and 5 tbsp runny honey and spread it all out on a baking tray. The recipe only had 50g of the seeds and coconut and 150g of mixed nuts but as we rarely have nuts in the house (M is "sensitive" to peanuts so we try and avoid them if we can) I upped the other ingredients.

I then baked this mix in the oven for 25 minutes, making sure I stirred it about to stop it burning, every 5 minutes or so.

When it was lovely and golden I took it out of the oven and then mixed in 200g of dried mixed fruit. My selection was rasins, dried cranberries and dried apriots. I then left it to cool and stored it in an air tight jar where it should last a few weeks, if I can stop myself snacking on it that is!

It barely had time to cool before I had to give it a try, mixed in with some natural yoghurt - yummy!