Walnut and Date Muesli/Granola.

I am very fond of a bowl of muesli for breakfast. According to the internet, Muesli is unbaked and Granola is toasted.

Well, that’s the first time I heard of such a difference. You can get unbaked muesli, but I don’t know of any one down here referring to the toasted stuff as granola.

We just talk about toasted and untoasted muesli. No one eats granola down here, but in deference to my American friends, whom I love, I have included the word in the title.

Regardless of what you call it, you should watch out for breakfast cereals. They are high in fibre, but they can be horribly high in refined sugar too. In fact, some cereals are so high in sugar, you really might as well eat cookies and biscuits for breakfast. And I mean the Kiwi/Aussie biscuits, which are loaded with butter and sugar.

So here is my delicious, toasted muesli that doesn’t have cups and cups of white sugar in it. This is a base recipe; you can get really creative with this one and add and remove as your fancy takes you.

Ingredients

Around about 15 cups of rolled oats (sometimes I like to use two bags of Aldi’s sugar free untoasted muesli instead. It has bits and pieces added in, which I like, but as an end product, I find it boring and hard to eat.

Two cups of chopped walnuts.

Two cups of chopped almonds.

Two cups of dried fruit.

Two cups of medium sized dates. If they’re huge, chop them down to nice mouthful sizes.

Five tablespoons of vanilla essence (you’re making a lot of muesli).

Cinnamon to taste.

Quarter of a cup of oil.

Quarter of a cup of maple syrup or honey.

Instructions.

Combine all the ingredients except the dates. (in my experience, dates do not toast well, they go hard and lose a lot of their lovely sweetness).

Make sure that the oil and sweetener of your choice is thoroughly mixed through the batch.

Spread the ingredients out on large oven trays.

Pop in the oven at about 220c (428 f), for about 20 minutes, stirring often to avoid blackening the top layer.

If you’d like to make this muesli with coconut shreds or shavings, I suggest adding them right at the end, about five minutes before you pull the muesli out of the oven. It’s just so easy to burn!

When it is toasted to your liking, remove the muesli from the heat and allow it to cool.

At this point you can add cornflakes and bran if you like.

Once it’s cooled, put it into whatever container you use to store your muesli. It had better be a BIG container. This muesli should theoretically last for absolutely ages and you should gain less weight on it than the sugary versions at the store. But I can’t promise it. It often disappears a lot faster than the store stuff and apparently, low sugar muesli loses some of its slimming power if you triple the amount you’re eating in a day. He he. Enjoy.

PS, if you’d like to watch your muesli vanish even faster, stick around for my recipe on how to turn it into delicious salty/sweet cookies. Oh those don’t last at ALL!