Recently, whilst flicking through one of my Mum’s food magazines a recipe for Christmas granola jumped out at me. I whipped up a batch last weekend and was really pleased with the jewel-like, crunchy, delicious outcome…
It’ll take pride of place in the homemade hampers that I’m gifting my family members with this year along with the caramelised red onion chutney and balsamic pickled shallots, which I’ve blogged recently.
All you need to make about 2 litres of the stuff…
500g rolled oats
1 x 90g pack sunflower seeds
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tsp ground allspice
150g maple syrup
100g light brown sugar
300g mixed nuts, roughly chopped
750g mixed dried fruit, roughly chopped (I used dates, apricots, sultanas and these amazing crimson raisins, which I found in Sainsburys)
100g dessicated coconut
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Put all of the ingredients except for the dried fruit and coconut into a large bowl and get your hands dirty mixing it all together and making sure that everything is coated in syrupy, sugary, spicy goodness.
Pour the mixture out onto 2 to 3 baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes. The added bonus is that it’ll make your kitchen smell absolutely divine. When the time’s up, take the trays out and shake them up, turning the mixture over before popping back in the oven for another 10 minutes.
Whilst the oaty mixture is in the oven you can mix the dried fruits and coconut together in a bowl ready for later.
Remove your granola from the oven and leave it to cool…
Then simply mix everything together and decant it into pretty jars…
Use your artistic license to cover the lids and/or add labels…
Easy as pie…or granola!
