Shop bought granola is delicious, but usually quite expensive and stored in a plastic wrapper. So if you are wanting to save money and avoid plastic packaging, making your own is the solution. Often shop bought granola is surprisingly high in sugar too! My recipe is sweetened with just date syrup (or if I can’t find date syrup I just blend dates and water into a smooth sauce and use that – in fact it’s better this way as you keep all the good fibre of the dates in the granola too). We sell oats, nuts, seeds and dried fruit in plastic free or compostable packaging and this recipe blows any shop bought one I’ve tried out of the water. Store it in an airtight container like a large glass jar and it should stay fresh and crunchy for at least 1 month…that’s if you don’t eat it all up before then! Liz x
Ingredients
- 500g oats (we also sell gluten free oats)
- 3 tsp ground ginger
- 3 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tsp salt
- 200g chopped nuts (a mix of almonds, cashews, walnuts…?)
- 100g sunflower seeds
- 100g pumpkin seeds
- 100g small seeds (linseeds, sesame seeds, chia seeds…)
- 330g date syrup (or 200g chopped dates soaked with 130g water then blend into a smooth sauce)
- 250ml olive oil (or any good quality oil you prefer)
- 300g chopped dried fruit (apricots, raisins, figs, mulberries…)
Method
Pre-heat your oven to 150C and prepare a couple of large baking dishes or the bottom of your grill tray. Line them with re-usable or compostable baking parchment.
In a large bowl, measure out your oats, spices, salt, nuts and seeds. Do not add the dried fruit yet! Give the dry mixture a good stir to evenly disperse the spices and salt before adding the oil and date syrup.
Add the oil and date syrup/sauce and stir well to coat all the dry ingredients.
Spread the granola out onto your lined trays into a thin 1-2cm layer.
Bake the granola in the oven. Take it out every 10-15 minutes and stir to ensure the granola gets evenly baked.
Once it’s nice and crunchy and tastes perfectly toasted, remove the granola from the oven and stir through all the dried fruit.
Allow the granola to completely cool down in the trays before storing it in an airtight container.
Enjoy with your favourite milk or yoghurt or sprinkle it on top of ice cream or smoothie bowls, or just eat it dry as a snack!