Honey Gold

Nutty granola's are not to everyone's taste, but I've always had a fondness for pecan nut and this recipe is as close as I can come to some lovely pecan granola that I've tasted on my travels. It also has a lovely golden colour and is sweeter than my usual recipe.

Ingredients:

500g Flahavan's Organic Jumbo Oats
100g Flaked Almonds
130g Chopped Pecan Nuts
150g Sunflower Seeds
60g Sesame Seeds
25g Dessicated Coconut
100ml Sunflower Oil
200g Honey
1tsp Vanilla Extract

Method:

Heat the honey, oil and vanilla extract in a saucepan over a low heat (or in a microwave until the mixture is warm and fluid. Mix well with a wooden spoon (I'm always tempted to add some bizarre instruction like "made from a piece of wood that has been carved from a hawthorn at midnight on the night of a full moon and dried under your true love's pillow for 7 years, but I guess that might just undermine the principle of simple, unfussy cooking advice and invite all sorts of contributions on whether hawthorn spoon would even work!).

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. I blitzed them together in a blender very briefly both as a means of mixing and of getting to a more consistent mix, breaking up the larger nuts and shredding the coconut but this is by no means essential.

Add the honey and oil to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Leave to stand for an hour or so to allow the oats time to absorb as much of the liquid as possible.

Spread the mixture on parchment lined baking trays and cook in an oven, pre heated to 150 degrees centigrade, for 30 minutes , stirring frequently (and certainly no less than every 10 minutes).

A personal tip is to empty the finished trays into a wok and allow to cool. The wok retains a fair amount of head and ensures that the mixture dries thoroughly before you transfer it to storage jars.

If you plan to add dried fruit , this is the time to do so, the heat of the wok will also allow the fruit to expand, absorbing any remaining moisture in the mix.

Serving:

Serve with fresh milk or yogurt and , if you have a very sweet tooth, some extra West Cork honey!

Enjoy!.