I’ve read quite a few recipes for granola, and never really understood the point of it – is it a breakfast food? A snack? Now that I’ve made it, I realise it’s a bit of both, and an excellent way of using up some of your homemade apple sauce (if you’re like me, and have made mountains of it). It’s like a very crunchy toasted muesli which sticks together in small clumps – excellent for snacking on, sprinkling over yoghurt and eating for breakfast with yoghurt and stewed fruit.

(Recipe adapted from here, which in turn is adapted from a Nigella Lawson recipe)

ingredients:
5 cups rolled oats
3 cups almonds, coarsely chopped
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 cup homemade apple sauce (or other unsweetened apple sauce)
1/3 cup golden syrup or treacle (or honey if you don’t have either)
1/4 cup honey
2 tablespoons rice bran oil or other vegetable oil

Preheat the oven to 150C. In a large bowl, stir together all the dry ingredients. Heat up the apple sauce, treacle, honey and oil in a small saucepan until warm, then pour into the dry ingredients. Quickly stir together until everything is evenly coated with the apple sauce mixture.

Roughly line two large baking trays with baking paper (by which I mean, put lengths of baking paper over the trays and don’t bother to stick them on with butter), and spoon half the mixture onto each tray, spreading it out evenly and pressing it down firmly with the back of your spoon. Put the trays into the oven for 45 minutes, opening up and stirring around the granola twice during the baking process.

Let the granola cool, and store it in air tight containers, easily accessible for snacking purposes – it will be deep brown, with some clumps, and deliciously crunchy.