I’ve had a few people ask me about my homemade muesli (okay two, but two is still ‘people’), so I thought I’d post about it here. It isn’t so much a recipe as some rough guidelines that you can go crazy with. I started making muesli because I wanted a healthy, cheap and easy breakfast but didn’t really like any of the brands off the shelf.

Chisa’s Awesome Muesli

You need:

• 1 tablespoon of honey
• 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
• 3 cups of rolled oats
• 1/2 cup – 1 cup of nuts and seeds
• 1/2 – 1 cup of dried fruits

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150 degrees Celsius.
2. Put the honey and oil together in a saucepan over medium heat, until they melt together – this doesn’t take long, so keep an eye on it.
3. Take off the heat and mix in oats, nuts and seeds. Mix well so it’s all covered. This recipe doesn’t use much oil or honey so the mixture might still look a little dry – it still bakes fine, or you can add more oil to taste.
4. Spread the mixture evenly over a baking tray and pop in the oven for 15 minutes.
5. After 15 minutes take out the tray and mix around the mixture, then put it back in for another 15 minutes.
6. Take out and mix again, then a last 15 minutes in the oven.
7. Allow the mixture to cool completely then add in dried fruit.
8. Store in an airtight container, and serve with yoghurt or milk.

This time I used chopped almonds, pumpkin seeds (pepitas) and linseed. I used to buy packs of slivered almonds to save time, but I’m finding chopping up whole almonds easier because I always have them around (roasted almonds = best snack ever). A friend uses Brazil nuts in hers because of the vitamin E content and other good stuff. Other good things to mix in are bran flakes or sticks, or popped rice.

I usually put in sultanas and dried apricots (I like the really sour ones), and this time I put in some dried dates that I had handy. If this stuff is too sweet for you (I know a lot of people dislike sultanas for this reason), try dried cranberries or dried apple. Dried fruits do add a fair bit of sugar to the muesli, so if you really don’t like the sweetness or want to keep sugar intake down then leave them out altogether.

I like to eat to eat my muesli with unsweetened natural or Greek style yoghurt since the dried fruits make it sweet enough already, and because I often use yoghurt in cooking so like to have some around. Adding fresh fruits, especially berries, tangerines and bananas, make it even better. Yum!