Monday 2 September 2013

BerryHealthy: Homemade Granola - No added Sugar

Hello!
How are you all? Are you looking forward to fall? I know I am! Fall brings the more hearty food back to life. That means hot drinks, warmer dinners and for the morning: Granola. I showed my homemade granola that I made the other week in my Weekly Roundup Post here.


Making this granola is so very easy! Literally, all you need is some oats and anything you have in your pantry. By that I mean there are no real SET ingredients that you need to add to your granola - you can add anything your heart desires - as many or as little nuts, seeds and dried fruits as you wish!

Actually, I made this granola myself because I had a lot of oats in my cupboard by which I wasn't eating. Well, I love porridge, but during the summer time I don't tend to lean towards it for breakfast as I normally don't fancy something hot in the morning. This way, I was using the oats and introducing it to my summer meals, and with fall coming Granola will be even more fun to eat! haha! Actually, we were roasting peanuts, almonds and cashews for a trail mix that we made, and I thought that I'd take the opportunity of the hot oven to make my yummy granola - and I'm glad I did!
Said Trail Mix
Store bought granola tends to have added sugars and ingredients that we do not realise - and to be quite honest, do not want! A lot of the time they make the cereal sound so healthy, yet it actually isn't as there are about 10 teaspoons of sugar in every bowl (exaggeration.) - but I mean I have seen some granola that has more sugar than a bowl of Frosties, yes, that's a lot of sugar! This way, making it at home means you know exactly what is in your granola and its made to your tastes!


Ingredients:
- Oats
- Almonds (chopped)
- Peanuts (whole)
- Pumpkin seeds
- Sunflower seeds
- Dried Apricots (chopped)
- Raisins
- Dried Dates (chopped and pitted)
- Honey

Method:
- Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees celcius
- Gather oats, almonds, peanuts, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds into a baking tray
- Pour some honey into the mixture and stir until evenly distributed (add honey as you desire, taste a bit to see if it's sweet enough to your tastebuds!)
- Place tray in the oven (you can add some raisins to roast too but not right away as they don't require that much time and can burn)
- Mix together dried apricots, dates, and raisins in another bowl
- Every 3-4 minutes stir the ingredients in the oven
- Take out once golden and cooked, leave to cool
- After cooled, add ingredients in the oven to dried apricots, dates, and raisins and stir
- Taste to see if sweetness is desired, if you need more, add honey

That's it! As you can see there were no real set measurements that I had but just did it 'by eye'. You can get more ideas from the pictures I have taken to what it should/could (depending on ingredients used) look like! You can then have granola on your favourite yogurt with berries, with milk or even on ice-cream! yum!
Well, this was a requested post, and I had fun writing it! If you have any requests let me know!

What do you like to eat with granola? Leave it in the comments!

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