Granola

I've been following Sami from A Teenage Gourmet since she began her blog and I have to say that she's wonderful! Her recipes are generally low calorie and very healthy but without omitting ANY flavour which can be a real life saver some days. The following is her granola recipe, which was adapted from Bon Appetit. This is perfect in the morning with some milk or sprinkled on top of yoghurt or even as a mid day/night snack. I recently went to Queensland for a holiday with some friends and I brought a snap lock bag of this with me - they loved it and we sat for at least 10 minutes feasting. 

I’ve altered her recipe further to work with what ingredients were in stock. You can leave out the chocolate if you want to go healthier, personally I leave it in as it will clump together this way providing more variation in the texture.

Ingredients:

3 cups oats

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans (I've changed this to almonds and cashews which both worked well)

2/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut 

3 tablespoons brown sugar

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/3 cup honey

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 cup assorted dried fruit (I use raisins, currants, cranberries and sultanas)

Method:

Preheat oven to 150°C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Combine the first 7 ingredients in a bowl. Stir honey and oil in saucepan over medium-low heat until smooth. Pour the hot honey mixture over dry ingredients, toss to coat oats in the honey as evenly as possible.

Spread onto baking tray. Bake until golden brown, stirring every 10 minutes, for roughly 30 minutes.

What can I say, incorporating the chocolate wasn't working too well with the spatula so hands were resorted to :P

Place the tray on a wire cooling rack and stir granola, allow to cool. Mix in fruit. If you’re adding chocolate do so when it come out of the oven, you can either chop VERY finely or melt an individual dark chocolate bar, I tend to use about half a packet (50g) of dark chocolate and toss it through the hot mixture once it’s left the oven.

This will stay at it’s best if kept for about a week in an airtight container.