A delicious, nutritious breakfast in the morning sets the foundation for a successful day full of energy. However, the food industry loves to sell us loads of easy to access junk food as a proper first meal of the day. An unhealthy breakfast quickly brings back hunger and decreases your ability to concentrate throughout the day.

Because making healthy decisions in our every day lives begins right after we wake up, a delicious and healthy breakfast-recipe might help you with being successful. Maybe you have set yourself new goals for this year or you are still working on precious ones. In any case, I hope this new recipe will help you lead a healthier life.

A healthy alternative to conventional granola

Since the crunchiness of granola is often achieved with huge amounts of refined sugar, I have been on the lookout for a substitute that creates a similar crunch-effect but is less unhealthy. After an extended period of research and testing, I had the breakthrough one day: soaked flax seed makes for a sticky substance that can hold together the ingredients in granola and becomes quite crispy in the oven, all without the help of refined sugar! I was thrilled for two reasons. Not only was the decent replacement less unhealthy, it also brought additional health properties to the mix.

So here it is: a super delicious granola recipe that can easily be adjusted to ones preferences and does not require any refined sugar. It contains loads of fiber, healthy omega-3 fatty acids and minerals, and is ready to eat in less than half an hour. When preparing this granola, a food processor or high speed blender is very helpful, but most of the ingredients can be bought in their processed form as well. If your kitchen is not equipped  with one of those machines, a knife, a spoon, a chopping board and a mixing bowl will suffice. Plus we will need our hands for this recipe, with and without fancy kitchen gadgets.

As mentioned before, the recipe can easily be adapted to your own taste. Just exchange the nuts or oatmeal, the nut butter and liquid sweetener with your favorite ingredients or with what you have in your pantry. The quantities remain the same. Thanks to my hubby’s preferences for cashews, you find a coconut-cashew version of the recipe down below which I can highly recommend!

Crispy Baked Granola

Makes 6-8 portions

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp golden flax seed (buy flax meal if you don’t have a mixer, brown flax seed will do as well)
• 7 pitted dates (If using Medjool-dates, 3-4 will be enough. If you don’t have a mixer, substitute the dates for  3-4 Tbsp date syrup)
• 2 Tbsp honey (any liquid sweetener like maple syrup, rice syrup ore agave nectar will do)
• 2 heaped Tbsp cashew butter (oder any other unsweetened nut butter)
• 3 Tbsp cold water
• 2 cups oatmeal (use a mixture of quick and steel cut oats for more texture, or any other rolled grains)
• 1/4 c unsweetened shredded coconut
• 1/4 c sunflower seeds
• 1/4 c chopped cashews (use any other combination of nuts and seeds, as long as you get a total of 3/4 c)

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 180 °C or 350 °F. Grind your flax seed in a mixer or food processor or use store-bought flax meal. Then add the dates and mix until they are finely chopped.

If using date syrup, add it now with the water, liquid sweetener and nut butter and blend or stir until a sticky paste forms. Let this mixture sit until it thickens, while you prepare the other ingredients.

Now use your fingers to rub the sticky paste into the dry ingredients until all is incorporated and a streusel-like consistency forms.

Now sprinkle the mixture as evenly as possible onto a paper lined baking tray. The more even the streusely chunks will be, the more evenly baked it will turn out.

Now bake your granola for a total of 15 minutes and stir once after 7 minutes. Then take it out of the oven and let it cool completely, it will then crisp up even more.

This granola is best kept in an airtight container for up to about 2 weeks. After that it might start to draw humidity and lose its crunch. It hardly ever lasts that long in our house anyway.

My tip: If you like fruity granola, add about 1/4 c chopped dried fruit when it’s all done. Dried cranberries go very well with this cashew-coconut-version. I love to enjoy my granola with some almond-oat-milk and some fresh cut up fruit. What kind of granola person are you?