I tried quite a few granola recipes in my 17 years of running a B&B. And this is one is our favourites. Our guests loved it and it’s what Rob has every morning for his breakfast, on top of chopped banana and natural Greek yoghurt. Either that or this healthy but delicious Bircher Muesli Recipe.

Whilst Rob is not a great lover of plums, my guests usually raved about this Spiced Roast Plum Recipe, which is a great autumn and winter dish when the local fresh fruits aren't in season.

This granola recipe is full of healthy nuts and seeds, as well as heart friendly oats, healthy oils and no refined sugar. If you make it with gluten free oats, then it's gluten free. I made it with maple syrup, so it was suitable for my vegan guests. But you could easily substitute the syrup for honey.

You don’t need to be too exact with the ingredients. If I find I’m missing some of the dry ingredients ( with the exception of the oats of course ), I just leave them out. And speaking of oats, it really works best with jumbo rolled oats. If you’re in America, you might find them called rolled or old fashioned oats.

I make a big batch of granola and store it in a couple of large kilner jars. It never lasts more than 2 weeks here, before being eaten, so I can’t guarantee how it long it will stay fresh. But I’d say about a month at least.

*** August 2023 Update ***

After a bit of a break, when I was convincing myself that the healthy granola from the supermarket was as good as my own homemade, I made a batch recently and realised it wasn't!

I've updated the recipe a bit based on my latest preferences and healthy eating guidelines.

I now use milled chia seed rather than whole and I've added in coconut flakes, psyllium husk and oat bran, so I can even more of my plant based foods in a week!

All of these added extras are optional - you can make the recipe your own.

I've also swapped to using extra virgin olive oil, as I no longer cook with sunflower oil.

Ingredients

• 400g jumbo rolled oats
• 100g chopped brazil nuts
• 100g chopped walnuts or pecans
• 100g flaked almonds
• 100g whole almonds with their skins on
• 100g sunflower seeds
• 100g pumpkin seeds
• 25g milled chia seeds
• 75g milled flaxseed
• 25g psyllium husk 
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon ( I actually go up to 4 teaspoons because we are cinnamon fans here )
• 150ml extra virgin olive oil ( you could use sunflower or coconut oil )
• 150ml maple syrup or honey

Method

Preheat an oven to 160 degrees celsius

Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Warm the extra virgin olive oil and honey or maple syrup together and then pour onto the dry ingredients. Mix really well.

Line a large baking tray with baking parchment. The baking parchment needs to hang over all of the edges of the baking tray, so you can easily pick it up and pour the finished granola into you jar once it’s cooled.

Pour the granola onto the baking tray and put into the oven. It will probably take about 30 minutes. Stir it a couple of times during the cooking time and make sure it doesn’t get too brown.