Wow, Granola!

Even to me it kind of seems incredible that I had never had granola before reading a posting on Mic dejun de Bucuresti, an adorable breakfast blog that captures the beauty of early mornings from Bucharest, on granola and morning coffee. It's a beautiful blog and I recommend it to you warmly if you like sunrise, black coffee, good photography and some great ideas of healthy and varied breakfasts.

Therefore, inspired by Mic Dejun de Bucuresti, I adapted Joy of Baking's recipe for granola, I mixed everything with great love, great expectations, great anticipation, and bang, for the first time in my life, I tasted granola: healthy, crunchy & boosting with vitamins that provide a wholesome breakfast.

My first home-made granola with orange blossom water labneh, dehydrated raspberries, vanilla & pistachios

 inspired by Mic Dejun de Bucuresti and adapted from Joy of Baking

Ingredients 

(for 2 persons)

a cup of rolled oats

a handful of chopped almonds

a handful of walnuts

1/4 cup of pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup of sunflower seeds

1/4 dried fruit (golden jumbo raisins, cranberries, cherries etc)

a handful of pistachios

dehydrated raspberries

~ ~ ~

a small cube of melted butter

the juice of  1/2 a tangerine/orange

1 tbs of runny honey 

vanilla powder

Method

Preheat the oven at 160 degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a separate bowl melt the butter, add the honey, the freshly squeezed tangerine or orange juice and vanilla powder. 

Pour the thick liquid over the dry ingredients and mix well. 

As you can see,  I spread the granola mix on a baking sheet and baked it for 30 min at 120-150 degrees Celsius. 

During the roasting time, just make sure to stir the granola as it can brown so easily and regulate the temperature to roast the seeds and the oats evenly. The colour should be golden and the texture should be crunchy. 

So, so easy! Why haven't I tried it before??? While letting the granola cool, I prepared the labneh mix: 7% strained yoghurt cheese mixed with honey, orange blossom water and vanilla. 

I sprinkled some raw pistachios, dehydrated raspberries and extra vanilla powder and my first granola was ready to be sampled. Wow, it was delicious. 

How funny it is that, as I was planning & dreaming of my Saturday breakfast, I came across this beautiful passage from Random Acts of Heroic Love by Danny Scheinmann.

"Leo recalls eating breakfast. They had gone to their favourite cafe near their hotel. They had eaten a fruit salad with granola and honey. 'Breakfast of the gods', he had called it; pineapple, maracuya, mango and passion fruit. As he recalls it he tastes it again. Eleni had scoffed down a banana pancake with melted chocolate, and could not prevent the hot sauce dribbling down her chin. They had lingered over coffee. Afterwards they had returned to their hotel and picked up their heavy backpacks and set off for the bus station. There it was at last, the bus station. They were later than they had planned by over an hour. Would Eleni be alive now if they hadn't taken so long over breakfast? His memory stops at the bus station; he still cannot see any aspect of the journey in his mind. Perhaps it is better not to know, but he cannot seem to stop his thoughts racing. The holes are slowly filling up, and despite itself the brain will work until the job is completed."