Homemade Granola

I like my granola darkly toasted and clumpy, strewn with fruit, light on seeds, heavy on pecans and salty-sweet-savoury from sea salt, honey and extra virgin olive oil.



Originally I added the dried fruits at the beginning but they became too crunchy and you couldn't really detect the flavours. Now I add them near the end - just long enough for the fruits to soak up some of the liquid and meld into the mixture.

For breakfast, I dollop a few spoons of greek yogurt into my bowl, add whatever fresh fruit is to hand (sliced apple or banana, berries etc), splash in some milk and then scatter a handful of the granola over the top. It's also good with straight milk, though I like the complexity some fruit and slightly sour yogurt adds. Sometimes I take a little box of it to the library, to eat outside when I'm getting some fresh air. It's my granola break - a fag break for sugar-dependent non-smokers.

Finally, learn from my mistake: don't put it in a clear plastic box on your worktop. Whenever I'm in the kitchen I find it impossible to keep my hands from cracking the sides of the lid open and sneaking a few clumps. It taunts me every time I make a cup of tea.



Homemade Granola
(adapted from Nekisia Davis' recipe on Food 52)

135g oats - rolled or porridge or a mixture
60g pecan halves, broken up/chopped
20g brown sugar*
30g sunflower seeds
30g coconut strips
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 - 1 tsp fine sea salt
1/8 tsp ground/microplaned nutmeg
100ml runny honey or maple syrup
70ml extra virgin olive oil
40g dried cranberries
40g dried apricots, roughly chopped
30g raisins

Preheat the oven to 150C/300F. Get out a big mixing bowl and add the oats, pecan halves, sugar, sunflower seeds, coconut, cinnamon, 1/2 tsp sea salt and nutmeg (I put the bowl on my scales and zero as I add each one). Stir together. Add the honey and olive oil and stir well. Tip out onto a big baking sheet (with some sort of side) and spread out.

Put into the oven and bake for 10 minutes then stir (don't worry about how gloopy it looks) and put back in for another 15 minutes. Add the cranberries, apricots and raisins and stir in. Put back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes until the granola is a rich golden brown. Stir occasionally as it cools, breaking into small clumps if needed and scraping the bottom. Add the extra salt if you think it needs it. Keeps well in a sealed box or tin (mine has always run out in under a week).

(Makes 1 smallish batch, easy to scale up)

Tip: I pour the oil into my measuring jug first, then tip it around a bit so the sides are oily. Then pour in the honey up to the 170ml mark. It'll slip easily out into the bowl without the honey sticking.

* UPDATE 2014 - I now use 20g instead of 40g sugar - it's a touch less sweet and the flavours seem more pronounced. I mix and match the add-ins (i.e. nuts, seeds and fruits) according to my cupboard that day - dried cherries and chunkily chopped skin-on whole almonds are some of my new favourites. I also switch between honey and maple syrup - you can use the same volume.

Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

A proper British winter has descended. Grey, damp, and bone-chillingly cold.

If you do want to venture outside for a walk, as I did this Sunday, you'd better take a thermos and a snack. Nothing like a cup of tea to breathe some life into frosty fingers.



The first time I tried to photograph these cookies, they refused to play game. I was just on the edge of giving up and scrapping the post when I realised I should push myself forward instead.

So I baked up a new batch from the freezer, wrapped a few in a piece of cloth, make some tea and ventured out to the park for a picnic.



Living in a big city, I miss the silence. I grew up in the countryside, taking long walks most days through the fields and wild woods, by the rivers and over the bleak moors. The mountains we visited and lived in are quiet, majestic and full of crisp, clean air.

Even though there are green spaces here, they are hemmed by noisy roads and filled with families, cyclists, dog walkers, skate parks, shouting footballers, joggers. Sometimes I want to escape to a space that doesn't bear the touch of humanity.

Besides the silence, it would also be nice as then nobody would be there to look at me like I've gone totally batty because I'm standing on a park bench (/mossy boulder) taking pictures of a cup of tea and some cookies.



I'm on a dried cranberry kick at the moment so I adapted the recipe to include them. The cookies taste of nutty oats rounded off with brown butter, brown sugar, a touch of spice and salt - all offset by the fruity, slightly sharp cranberries. Rustic and satisfying.

The dough freezes beautifully - you can just take however many out want out of the freezer and bake them. Delicious, warm cookies in 15 minutes flat.



Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
(adapted from Erin C. Weber in Remedy Quarterly Issue 6, who adapted from Deb)

115g unsalted butter
85g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp fine sea salt
120g light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla paste/extract
135g porridge/rolled oats
100g dried cranberries

Melt the butter in a wide pan. Keep heating as it foams up. When the foam starts to reside, rusty brown flecks appear and it starts smelling fantastic, scrape all the butter and flecks into a bowl to cool.

In another bowl, whisk the sugar, egg and vanilla together until smooth. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon together. Once the brown butter is down to body temperature, whisk into the egg mix. Gently stir in the flour mixture until everything is combined. Finally fold in the oats and cranberries. Cover the bowl and put into the fridge to chill. Leave to chill for 1 to 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Scoop out tablespoonfuls of dough onto a sheet - if baking immediately, leave a few inches gap. If freezing, place closely together then freeze on the sheet before putting in a bag the next day. Place into the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes from the fridge, 11-13 from the freezer - they should be golden and crisp on the outside. Cool on a rack.

Edited 07/10/15 - I've recently tried this with dried cherries, which worked well.

(Makes about 30)

Cranberry, Orange and Acacia Honey Steamed Pudding

Being British, I probably should have made a steamed pudding before. I did have it on my to-bake list but it didn't get crossed off until it became April's challenge for the Daring Bakers. Conversely, I wanted to make it before I came back to Britain, and as a result, I couldn't find the suet we were asked to use if possible. Instead, I adapted two butter based recipes for my purposes...



Looking at all the treacle and golden syrup puddings, I decided that it was a shame that honey didn't seem to be used (I'm quite sure that people used to make - and still do make - honey steamed puddings, but I couldn't find a recipe).

As a result I decided that I should use up one of the little pots of swiss honey we buy each summer at the market. They have an uncanny ability to split slightly and cause a small flood of honey in the cupboard, which meant that the pot of Acacia honey had been sitting in my mum's special hot chocolate mug for several months. To free her mug and to create an excuse to buy some more this summer, I used the remainder of that pot up. We still have several nearly dead ones that we don't have the heart to throw out, as you can see above.



To complement this gorgeous honey flavour, I decided to add soaked dried cranberries for a bit of a sharp kick and some lovely colour. For the first time it seems that they have started stocking dried cranberries in the supermarket at home (YES, cranberry sauce with the turkey at Christmas!) and so I wanted to try baking with them.  Before I used them, I soaked them overnight in some of the honey and the juice of an orange.

The April 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.



I then added some of the cranberry soaking juice to an additional few tablespoons of honey in the bottom of my pudding bowl. For the pudding itself I made the butter based pudding then added the cranberries and some orange rind and steamed it in Mum's big old le creuset vegetable steamer.

I served my pudding with an orange infused custard, which was lovely. I think mine somehow sunk when I had a peek to see if it was done with about 15 minutes to go - it wasn't done and when it was, it was pretty solid instead of spongey. The flavours were nice but I think I should probably try a different recipe another time.