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.

Butterscotch cookies, with a little bit of help from Ikea

You may or may not know that we recently moved house.  It wasn't as stressful as it need have been because we chose to have the movers pack up all our stuff.  Sadly, the unpacking wasn't a service they offered.  But, at Mr Becca's insistence, that task was completed in a matter of weeks.  And we discovered that we had a lot of stuff, but finally a bit more space than stuff - yey!!  So a trip to Ikea was deemed appropriate, to purchase storage items so that our stuff looked nicer and tidier in the new house.  It's a fair drive from Becca Towers, and we thought to do it without the kids for a change, so they didn't have to submit to the long drive there and back for little (for them) reward.  Mr Becca had a few days annual leave, so we went.

And whilst there, I saw a large bag of Swedish butterscotch chip milk chocolate.  And my first thought, after Mmm, how tasty, was what could I bake with them?  Ha ha, never switched off (much to Mr Becca's chagrin at times).  So here's what I baked - my trusty Carnation milk recipe cookies, with a twist.

The chocolates were far too large to include as is, so each one was chopped into quarters and popped into the cookie dough, along with some leftover cashew nuts we hadn't yet eaten.  The dough then gets split in half and rolled in a sausage and refrigerated for at least 20 minutes to firm up before slicing.

I just sliced up half of one sausage to get ready as an after school treat for the girls, I had only about 20 minutes before I had to leave to pick them up, so had a wee panic as to whether these would be ready in time or not...

Lucky for me, and the girls, they were!  And a delicious after school snack was enjoyed by all!!  There's still dough left in the fridge - it keeps for about a week, so we'll be enjoying this treat for a few days yet I think.

Heidi's birthday traybake

One of the toddler group helpers/ex-mums (i.e her youngest child is at school now) had her birthday the day after mine, and was planning birthday drinks at hers the week after.  And couldn't decide between little pink mini cupcakes to go with the Prosecco, or wee tidbits of traybake to go with coffee at the end.  Independently we came to the conclusion that the latter would work better, and after some deliberation she chose our Sweet & Salty Crunch Nut slice with pink sparkle.  I find it hard to take an attractive photo of an entire traybake, but hopefully you get the idea.

It went down a storm too, if the comments on our Facebook page are anything to go by!

Sorry Rich, sweet & salty crunch nut slice

We caught up with an old friend today, Rich, meeting at Stirling Castle (about halfway between our cities).  He is an avid follower of our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/beccabakes2) and so knows that we bake often.  Thus he was most disappointed when we arrived empty-handed.  I was secretly pleased, because I didn't think he'd mind.  So, as a way to ensure I don't disappoint anyone else this week, I whipped up a Sweet & Salty Crunch Nut Slice for our picnic lunch at Falkland Palace tomorrow (yet again, about halfway between us and tomorrow's friends).  We're seeing different friends on both Tuesday and Wednesday, so I'm not yet sure what we'll do for that.  Cupcakes are the best bet, because a batch goes a long way... But we've done them a lot lately, so perhaps something new?  Or at least different.  Any ideas?