Almond, linseed and sunflower seed muesli

I love muesli and I like to surround myself with other people who love muesli.  My mum has eaten muesli for breakfast her whole life and my boyfriend Luke eats muesli for dessert.  In fact if left unsupervised, Luke will eat an entire box in one day.  His muesli-habit can quickly get out of control so we generally try to make our own or we add our favourite nuts, seeds and fruit to a store-bought muesli combination of flakes, oats, buckwheat and rice puffs.

My friends also love muesli; we talk about combinations, cooking techniques (one of my friends makes hers in the microwave and it’s really, really good!), what new brands are out etc.  On a trip to Sydney last year my friend and I even went to the David Jones food department just to look at their range of muesli.

Muesli really makes me happy and the thought of eating it for breakfast gets me out of bed in the morning. I don’t like milk, unless it’s in my coffee or combined with ice cream to make a shake so I always eat my muesli with a dollop of Greek yoghurt and whatever fruit is around whether it be fresh, stewed or canned.

Other ingredients I regularly use in my homemade muesli are buckwheat, pumpkin seeds, dried peach and nectarine, ground ginger, grated ginger – you squeeze the juice out and use this juice in the first stage below (cooking it with the oats and honey), cinnamon, dried blueberries, bran, cashew nuts, maple syrup – the possibilities are absolutely endless!

Ingredients

4 (although I like to times this recipe by 5 to make a nice big batch for the week)

• --
• 3 cups oats, I use jumbo, wholegrain
• 2 Tbsp + 1 Tbsp honey
• 1 cup whole dessert almonds
• ½ cup linseed
• ½ cup sunflower seeds
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup rice flakes (or you can use puffed rice)
• 1 cup coconut thread
• 1 cup cranberries

Method

• --
• 1. Preheat your oven to 160ºC on Bake.
• 2. Scatter oats in an oven dish. Drizzle 2Tbsp honey over the oats (you may need to melt honey a little for it to be drizzle-able). Bake this mixture for 10-15 mins, stir the oats every 5 minutes to ensure even cooking.
• 3. Take the tray out of the oven, add the almonds, linseed, sunflower seeds, half of the coconut (½ cup), cinnamon and 1 Tbsp honey and mix (adding even more honey at this stage will create little oat clusters). Transfer the oven dish back into the oven and cook for a further 10-15 mins (or once the mixture is an even light-golden-brown).
• 4. Transfer the cooked oats, nuts and seeds to another dish (or bowl) and mix in the final ½ cup coconut, the cranberries and the rice flakes. Stir to combine. This is mixed in another dish as we don’t want the ingredients cooking any further.
• 5. Serve with Greek yoghurt and your choice of fresh or stewed fruit.