Hazelnut, Walnut and Blueberry Granola

This is a short and quick one. It's your chance to love the humble and otherwise bland morning cereal by upping it with some great stuff. so here's the deal: i love my breakfast cereal way too much to leave it at 'just cereal'. I improvise, add stuff, and most importantly, don't restrict myself to eating it with just milk. Thing is, i start my day very early and head to work in what can best be described as a whirlwind of activity in a sleepy stupor. As it turns out, i tasted amazing homemade granola a couple of months back in Bangalore and loved it and that's how the experimenting started.
One of my fav twists is the hazelnut, walnut and blueberry version. i'm not going to sell the ''it is very healthy and yada yada'' talk to you. Making this is no biggie. It's brilliantly simple and an example of how something as simple as store bought muesli can be turned into something wonderful and refreshingly different with the help of few but very potent ingredients.

You will need:

-450 g standard store bought Muesli

-200 g toasted and coarsely chopped hazelnuts

-200 g toasted and coarsely chopped walnuts

-150 g dried blueberries

-1/4 light cup brown sugar

-1/4 cup raisins (optional)

-Pre-heat the oven to 160 C and line a flat, not too deep baking tray with baking paper.

-Mix everything up and in an even and not too thick layer, fill the tray with mueseli. Note:  You are anyway going to be doing it in batches, so please do not pile it on. 

-Toast the mueseli for 15 min or till golden brown. Make sure you keep checking for over browning. Do not forget to rotate the try. Also, keep mixing it up so that any bit under may come up and get toasted.

-Continue till all batches are done. Let it cool to room temperature. Store in an air-tight sealed jar.

Served best with cold milk and topped with fresh strawberries. I also gorge on it as is. just like that. plain, straight out of the jar. :)

Genius Pick-me-up: Granola bars

 It is no secret that i enjoy a snack with Oreo while mindlessly recounting office stories to her when i get back home after a fricking long and borderline murderous cab ride after office. And that snack is important to us. It's mostly something that does not go down well with my ethics of 'minimum junk food'. So to ease that conscience and without compromising on my sweet tooth craving, i put together some of my favorite ingredients and made a truly genius piece of pick-me-up. and named them granola bars. They already exist in the supermarkets aisles here in India BUT as it turns out, i do not like them. They are saccharine sweet, sticky for the wrong reasons and if i did'nt mention it already, excessively sweet! Not my kinda granola bar. Hence my own version.

My own version is egg-less (this is a first! Yay!), AP flour free (also a first, yay yay!), got goodies like almonds and honey plus it's got minimal sugar and butter. Just mix 'em up and pop into the oven. Really. The simplicity will blow you away. The result, better still! Thought balloon: Maybe i'm getting on the 'eat healthier at-least-once-in-a-while' bandwagon. Bet my mom will be thrilled.

The dry ingredients:
Oat flour - 1/3 cup*
Oats - 3/4 cup
Crushed Corn flakes - 1/4 cup
Puffed rice: 1/8 cup
Slivered Almonds: 1/3 cup
Whole almonds: 1/4 cup
Raisins: 1/4 cup
Chocolate chips: a handful
Salt: 1/4 teaspoon
Cinnamon powder: 1/8 teaspoon
*You can make the oat flour by simply blitzing in a mixer 1/3 cup oats for less than half a minute! :)

Not so dry ingredients:
Brown sugar: 1/4 cup
White sugar: 1/4 cup
Honey: 1/4 cup
Butter: 3 tablespoons
Water: 2 tablespoons

How you go about it:

Preheat the oven to 170 C.

Line a tin with aluminium foil and make sure the sides overhang. Butter the foil.

Melt the sugars and butter over a low flame. Add in the honey and water. Take it off the flame once the mixture starts to boil. Keep aside.

Sift together all the dry ingredients.

Make a well in the middle of the ingredients, add the sugar/honey syrup into the dry ingredients and mix as well as you can so that you wet all the dry ingredients and everything is evenly dispersed.

Bake in a preheated oven for 30 min at 165 C or till the colors changes to brown. Pop out of the oven and let cool completely in the tin. Remove from the tin using the overhanging paper on the sides. Cut into even bars and enjoy!

P.S: The target audience here is the people who make the lousy granola bars for the supermarkets, people who love to eat on the go, people who love to snack on something while doing chores, people who pack snack boxes for little ones or selves, to be mothers, already mothers, fathers, bosses, teachers, grand folks... you get the drift right. It tastes really good as is, with cold yogurt or with hot milk, when you are pooped, after a gym workout, a brain numbing meeting or after giving your dog a bath. It's also a great thing to cut through the monotony of deep fried goodies. The possibilities are endless, truly!