Getting healthy with homemade granola bars

We are still trying to get to grips with the busier, or rather shorter, weekday mornings (and by we, I don't mean me).  In an attempt to help The Team eat as well as they can in the short time available, I have been researching nutritious and delicious breakfast options, that aren't too time-consuming for me.  And when I came across the Lisa of 100 Days of Real Food, I was pleased. Although the premise is wonderful, I didn't feel like it was something I could easily slot into our lives.  But this granola recipe?  For sure.

As it happens, we pretty much always have all those ingredients in the house at any given time, so it was really easy to get started.

A large bowl full of oats, coconut, seeds, raw cashews, raw brazil nuts, pine nuts, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg - mmm...

Here we can see the seeds were a mix of pumpkin and sunflower, and somewhere in there are the pine nuts, because I didn't have enough cashews and walnuts as per the recipe.

 The melted butter and honey soaked in really quickly, so I had to get mixing fast!

There was so much mixture (the Americans seem to like making huge amounts of desserts at once) that I had to use my usual brownie tray (approx 20 x 30cm) plus an additional 20cm square tin. Although to be fair, the square tray had a thinner layer of mixture than the rectangular one.

And for future bakings, I would lower the recommended temperature and the time involved, as this seems a little dry and overdone to us.  The honey seems to have made it an extra specially golden colour.

However, despite the slight dryness to taste, it's deliciously cripsy, smells wonderfully of honey and tastes great with all the different seeds and nuts in each mouthful!  And it's lasting well in an airtight container, just perfect for afternoon tea or a quick bite in the mornings.

Honey Joys, or maybe cornflake crispy cakes

When I was a young girl, in a land far, far away, Kellogs Cornflakes had recipes on the side of the box.  As did Rice Bubbles and other breakfast cereals I'm sure, but I specifically remember those two. As I do now, my Mum used to bake with us as young kids, and the recipes on the side of these boxes were some of our favourites.  The Rice Bubbles (or Rice Crispies, as they're known here) one requires an ingredient that seems to only exist in that other land, but the Cornflakes one is easy to do anywhere in the world.  In fact, the actual recipe I use is cut from a box, about 20 years ago perhaps!

Suffice it to say, Mini-1 had a friend over to play and Mini-2 didn't fancy whatever game it was they were playing, so asked to bake instead - as you do.  We had made Honey Joys a month or so ago, so still had lots of cornflakes leftover.

A little aside.  I just Googled honey joys and was astounded to get links!! Those two links are different, but for the exact same recipe.  That is just so cool!  I had no idea it would be out there - isn't the web great?

So, as you can see from the recipes, they are super quick and easy to make.  The UK conversions are 90g of granulated white sugar and 150g of cornflakes.  And that's it.  It's seriously that quick and simple.

I find that you need to let them cool in the baking trays for a while, so that they harden in the correct shape.  And they do last in a baking tin for storage, but never for long chez Becca - they're far too more-ish for them to stick around long!  Even Mr Becca has been known to eat a few in a row.

These ones have pretty sprinkles added to them - it doesn't affect the taste at all, but the children thought it looked nicer.  If you make some, do come back and let us know how you got on!

Honey Joys

So, Saturday morning's chez Becca.  We're all in our jammies, watching cartoons after breakfast while Daddy sleeps on after his epic Friday Night cooking session.  The girls didn't fancy cornflakes for breakfast, and we have a lot to eat, as the box was large and had been opened.  Mummy's youth to the rescue!  I remembered a recipe I used to make with my Mum (and probably my siblings too) years ago that was fun and delicious, and cut out of the side of a packet of cornflakes - Honey Joys.  Basically, honey and cornflakes baked for a few minutes.  Mmmm...

Again there was a slight (correctable) issue with the reading of the recipe - as it's an Australian recipe, their tablespoon is actually 20ml whereas the British one is only 15ml.  No worries mate, as the Aussies say.  And the best bit about all this was that Mini-1 wanted to help!  Yey, she's not usually home when Mini-2 and I tend to bake and is getting bored of cake and cupcakes, so this was news indeed.

 The recipe - as you can see, I wasn't joking.  It really is cut out of the side of the packet, ha ha.

As suspected, these didn't last long at all.  And with their festive foil cases, we had to try one of each colour to see how the taste compared.  Weeeeeeell, any excuse for more treats!