I’m going to be honest I just love anything that contains oats and not the saw dust type supermarket brands but good high quality whole grain oats that have that distinct oats smell…yum… just yum!
Here’s a really simple recipe for homemade muesli that doesn’t take much effort or time to make but tastes divine and is great for a a quick breakfast with yogurt or milk or as a snack when the 4 o’clock munchies strike at work!
I even throw in a handful of this mix into my protein shake to give it that additional crunch and flavor.

The best part is you can play around with the ingredients and give your own twist to your recipe once you get the basic muesli recipe right, cacao nibs, desiccated coconut I could go on…
This recipe is gluten free, if you want to make it vegan just swap the honey with maple syrup or date syrup.

If you don’t know where to buy rolled wholegrain oats in India just click the link on the ingredient in the recipe.

muesli

8 min prep time 15 min cook time

Ingredients

Group A –Dry Ingredients

  1. 2.5 cups whole grain rolled oats
  2. 1 cup sliced almonds (or use walnut as an alternative or a combination of both, ½ cup each)
  3. ½ cup pumpkin seeds  (or use sunflower seeds, macadamia, pecans)
  4. 1 tbsp flax seeds  
  5. 1 tbsp chia seeds (or use sesame seeds instead)
  6. ½ tsp cinnamon powder (optional)
  7. A pinch of salt

Group B –Wet ingredients

  1. 1 tbsp. virgin coconut oil (or ordinary sunflower oil but I like the taste of coconut oil plus the health benefits)
  2. 1-2 tbsp. honey
  3. 1 tbsp. palm sugar/cane sugar
  4. 1 tsp vanilla essence
  5. ½ tbsp. water

Other ingredients to be added after roasting

  1. ½ cup raisins (regular golden or black)
  2. ½ cup dried and roughly chopped cranberries (optional)

Method

  1. Mix all the ingredients from group A in a large mixing bowl (dry ingredients)
  2. In another smaller cup or bowl mix group B ingredients (wet ingredients)
  3. Mix the bowl of wet ingredients in to the large bowl of dry ingredients thoroughly until the thick sticky honey sugar mix coats the oats etc.

Handy tip: pour out the coconut oil in a measuring tablespoon first so that the thick viscous honey will easily slide off the oil coated spoon when you use it!

  1. Pre-heat your oven (I use a convection oven) to 160C -a low temperature because you want to lightly roast and not burn the muesli.
  2. Line a baking tray with baking paper and spread a thin layer of the muesli mix onto the tray

(It has to be a thin layer so the mix gets evenly roasted. If your oven is small you will probably need to divide the mix into two or three batches)

  1. Place the tray with raw muesli mix inside the oven for 15 minutes
  2. Please note it is important to keep checking on the mixture in the oven and every five minutes or so to lightly toss the mixture around so that it gets evenly roasted.
  3. The mixture is ready when it turns into a light golden brown color. The muesli will not be crispy or crunchy at this time which is perfectly fine it will crisp up when you leave it out to cool.
  4. When you lay out the muesli to cool you can toss in the raisins and chopped cranberries
  5. Once the muesli completely cools you can store this mix in an airtight container for weeks…if you don’t manage to eat it all up 🙂 

Tweak this recipe slightly to make mango flavored muesli

For the wet ingredients:

  1. Place a saucepan on low to medium heat
  2. To this add the coconut oil, honey and 1 cup pureed mango (Raspuri, Badami, Alphonso, Beganpalli varieties work well), vanilla essence and water. (no palm sugar as the mango is already sweet)
  3. Cool the mango-honey sauce completely before adding to the dry mixture

Proceed as described in the main recipe above

Written by: Pooja Rao

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