As a Mom with a full time job a quick breakfast in the morning is a must, this has been refrigerator oatmeal for months and the kids (well me too) are tired of oatmeal. So cereal has become our best friend for right now, but finding cereal that has a low sugar content to keep my sugar sensitive hyperactive son on his best behavior throughout the day is very difficult and if you do find some that doesn't taste like you are eating cardboard the price may kill you anyway. If you have seen my son on a sugar high you would understand this is to preserve my sanity and keep his teachers from giving up on teaching. I have also made a real effort to reduce the number of preservatives in the food that we eat on a daily basis as I believe preservatives are not helping the hyperactivity. I stumbled on this link for a
Healthy Cereal from a juicing website that has some great tips for a healthy lifestyle, my disclaimer so to speak is they do not know who I am or even that I was inspired by their recipe to make my own cereal. Yes, we do incorporate juicing and smoothies into our everyday diet especially when its 100+ degrees during the summer months; the flip side is I work closely with both my own and my kids doctors who believe in a healthy balanced diet as a lifestyle not something you do for a few months then go back to the fast food. I encourage everyone to talk to their doctor, if you don't feel comfortable talking to your doctor find a nutritionist to work prior to making any lifestyle or diet changes.
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Just a little teaser to get you in the mood for breakfast. Trust
me this is really amazing and will keep you from snacking all
morning long, or is that just me that snacks all morning long. |
I was rummaging around my kitchen looking for ways to change up the recipe and to ensure my kids will not only eat the cereal, but love it. So I ran across some dried cranberries that were left over from making chocolate cranberry oatmeal. I measured out the 1 cup of nuts in my inspiration recipe and looked at it and thought this will not last very long at all and I need it last more than 1 day, so the recipe below was born. The serving size here is only a 1/2 cup. What how is that suppose to fill me up you say, trust me this is extremely filling and has no extra fillers that we have become accustomed to allowing us to fill the cereal bowl to the top. I came up with the serving size basically by going through a lot of this trying to gauge how much is a reasonable without being too much. For me this is a little closer to 1/4 cup, but ultimately I went with the 1/2 cup size that is also a single serving of oatmeal. When I first began making this and filled the bowl up then added milk it didn't take long before I thought what have I done there is no way I can finish this. Well I didn't finish it and the dogs got an extra treat in their bowls. I know they shouldn't eat people food so shhh don't tell anyone.
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I use my fingers to spread the coconut oil, the bonus here is
that coconut oil is a super moisturizer for dry skin. |
Since this is something that is very new to so many people, I am going to provide a lot of photos to ensure that you are successful your first time around. Plus when this is burnt it will stink terribly and I don't wish that on anyone.
Use a glass oven safe pan and rub coconut oil on the bottom to prevent the cereal from sticking during cooking. This doesn't need to be a lot at all. I put just enough on the pan to cover the bottom.
I do this first because I tend to forget and then have to scrub and scrape, which I hate!
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Please note that I do not endorse any particular brands, this is
just what is readily available in my area and therefore on hand
in my pantry. The jar is honey from a local apiary, support
your local farms and farmers when you can. |
Ingredients:
1/2 cup Coconut Oil
1/2 cup Honey (I encourage you to try local honey)
2 cups Walnuts
2 cups Oatmeal (old fashioned not quick oats)
2 cups coconut (I encourage you to go unsweetened if you can find it, I cannot find it so I use sweetened)
1 cup dried cranberries
2 tbsp cinnamon
I always buy the walnut halves and pieces as they are a little less expensive that the already chopped ones. I also like to control the size of the pieces so I choose to give them a rough chop with my favorite santoku knife.
I am sure if you are skilled using a single serve blender you can chop the nuts in one of those. I prefer not to use that method as the nuts get a little too pulverized for my likes, and I may be a control freak.
I also like to vary the size of the nuts between pieces size and larger almost half size. I like the variation and the texture that it gives the final cereal, but this is only my preference and can be changed to your preference. After the nuts are rough chopped I measure out 2 cups, this can be close enough if you chop a few too many nuts. After the nuts are chopped and measure out I dump them in the glass pan as that is where I everything up.
I also like to rough chop the cranberries as the size of these vary greatly out of the bag. I try to cut most of them at least in half. These are pretty sticky so they will stick to your knife. These also tend to get chewy during cooking which doesn't bother me but I am sure it would if they were left whole. If you cut a few too many, go ahead and throw them in the mix; this will not make a difference you will just have more fruit, which isn't a bad thing at all.
After I have the cranberries measured out, I just add them to the walnuts in the pan. I love the color of the cranberries against the walnuts, so had to share that here. As you can see my pan sits directly on the right side of my cutting board so this process goes very quickly.
Because I use a ton of oatmeal, I guess I really love oatmeal, I don't even bother to remove it from the cardboard package although I know I should. If you have ever tried to pour from those containers, you know that it makes a huge mess as it will not pour evenly. I know the inner seal has a pour spout but I almost immediately rip that off as soon as I get it home. So after months of
pouring getting oatmeal all over my kitchen, I finally broke down and bought a funnel.
Yes, I who thinks funnels are for sissies and just a way to get us to part with more of our hard earned dollars bought a funnel. Let me tell you that was the best 2 bucks I spent. Just remember I won't tell anyone if you choose to buy a sissy funnel too, just wear dark sunglasses and a hat when you buy it and no one will ever know.
So after getting the 2 cups of oatmeal measured out I just dump it into the glass pan with the walnuts and cranberries. As you can see I am pretty methodical about dumping the ingredients into the pan. I just love the mix of colors as the ingredients are layered into the pan.
The coconut, I typically am not extra generous with, but I do try to get it to be close to 2 cups. This gives an overall sweetness to the cereal and I want the sugar to be kept pretty low. If you have been lucky enough to find unsweetened coconut, I will be jealous, but feel free to walk on the wild side and add an extra handful or two.
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If you only read this caption, you must resist the urge to stop
here and eat it all. I had to take a picture for you before I
started munching away! |
I literally then dump the coconut into the pan with the walnuts, cranberries, and oatmeal. This looks so amazing to me, I also am very tempted to just grab a handful and start munching away. Must resist the urge!
This is the fun part, carefully mix the Walnuts, Cranberries, Oatmeal and Coconut until it is all well mixed. I like to use a wooden spoon here, but I am sure metal or plastic will work just as well. At this point I also look for pieces of Cranberry or Coconut that have stuck together, if you have any just break them apart or consider it your bonus for working so hard.
This is the fun part, carefully mix the Walnuts, Cranberries, Oatmeal and Coconut until it is all well mixed. I like to use a wooden spoon here, but I am sure metal or plastic will work just as well. At this point I also look for pieces of Cranberry or Coconut that have stuck together, if you have any just break them apart or consider it your bonus for working so hard.
Once this is all mixed up get ready for the sticky part.I always use a 2 cup glass measuring cup as coconut oil is somewhat messy. Do the best that you can and scoop out 1/2 cup coconut oil and press it into the bottom of your measuring cup. Don't worry if it isn't perfect, you can see mine is far from perfect but is pretty close to 1/2 cup.
Note: If you like crunchier cereal you can double the coconut oil and honey and cook 60 minutes. When you remove the cereal from the oven be sure to lay it out on paper towel lined cookie sheets to allow any excess oils to be absorbed by the paper towels before transferring it to the jars.
Next I just add 1/2 cup of honey right on top of the coconut oil in the glass measuring cup. This was I can microwave it right in the measuring cup and have one less bowl to clean up.
Because I don't want to have to clean up my microwave after any type of sticky explosion, I accidentally put marshmallows in the microwave for a minute and they grew out of the measuring cup and basically filled the entire microwave with sticky white fluff. That being said the clean up was a nightmare. So now my rule is use extreme caution and only microwave in 10 second intervals when there the potential for sticky things to explode.
In my microwave after 20 seconds this is how the coconut oil and honey look. At this point instead of risking my afternoon to clean up a huge mess, I just stir the coconut oil and honey until the remaining pieces are fully melted. This won't take long at all, if the pieces are being resistant or just taking too long to melt I will smash them on the side of the measuring cup and then they melt pretty quickly.
After the coconut oil and honey are melted, they will stay separate in the measuring cup so don't worry about that. I give them a quick stir and then pour it over the cereal the best that I can. I then mix everything together until the walnuts, cranberries, oatmeal, and coconut are all covered in the melted coconut oil and honey mixture. Bake this for 30-45 minutes stirring every 10 minutes until the liquid is all evaporated.
After it's all mixed up I like to add the cinnamon on top by sprinkling it all across the mixture. You could completely do this before mixing, but I just prefer to add it afterward. You will want to make sure that as many of the pieces are covered in cinnamon much like the picture.
I set the timer for 10 minute intervals so I don't forget about stirring the cereal. To stir I basically push everything to one end of the pan and then pull back to the other end making sure the top is rotated to the bottom, then I spread it back out.
After the 20 minute mark, the smell is beginning to spread throughout the house and it takes a ton of willpower to not snack on a few pieces, trust me if you can hold out the cereal is completely worth it.
After 30 minutes, there was still quite a bit of liquid on the bottom of the pan, so I set the timer for another 5 minutes. After the 30 minute mark I always set the timer for 5 minute intervals because burnt nuts and coconut does not smell all that great. I also snagged a little bite for me..shh...I ate it without taking a picture so I will deny it, and it's just as amazing as can be. When all the liquid is crystallized and the cereal is golden brown, I remove it from the oven. I let the cereal cool enough to make sure when I transfer it to jars condensation doesn't collect. While the cereal is cooling I make certain to continue to stir every few minutes to keep from having a single huge chunk of cereal.
Because I was also baking
pound cake I was having a terrible time getting the cereal to cool so I transferred it to a cookie sheet for about 5 minutes and that did the trick. You know when the cereal is cool enough to jar up when it's no longer hot to the touch (warm is perfect to jar up, but hot will condensate and cause you trouble) and the cereal has gone from soft to crunchy.
You can see my canning jars are ready as I am getting ready to jar this up as I intend to save the cereal while we finish up some Raisin Almond that was not as successful the first go round.
Even if you don't intend to store your cereal I encourage you to use jars, they are always easily washable, have no chemicals, and will not melt if they get put on the bottom rack of the dishwasher. You can also get the plastic screw on lids, I bought my plastic lids on amazon
here and they are pretty inexpensive, but considered an add on item. How I got around that was grouping all my add on items together into a single order, which worked out great. I love to get a box of random stuff, especially when they are all my favorite items.
Definitely take a whirl at trying to get your jar to seal, as this will take some practice; I will admit I am terrible at canning and may not always do things that a true canner would do. I do encourage you to make sure that the jars and lids are appropriately sterilized, I use the high heat setting on my dishwasher which is almost always filled with jars. If your mother is like mine she has said you cannot reuse lids, but as long as there are no knicks or rust I will reuse them and know that it's a 50/50 chance of not sealing but I walk on the wild side and take the risk.
While the cereal is still warm in the jar, I place the lid and ring onto the jar. Much like canning the cooling process will seal the jar; the shelf life is really undetermined because what my kids don't eat within a few weeks my mother will sneak out of my house to put on top of her yogurt.Today one of the quart jars sealed almost immediately, the other didn't and I happened to be cooking in the crock and moved the unsealed jar over next to the crock to see if the heat would coax the jar into sealing. The crock did not put off enough heat to get the jar to seal; I am sure my mother would have tried to heat the jar and cereal and use a new lid and ring. This wasn't necessary as my sweet neighbor came over to see what was going on, I think she smelled all the goodness and wanted to snack, and I gave her the jar that didn't seal since she loved it so much and would eat it right away.
My favorite way to eat it is with milk in a small bowl on a saucer, but rarely that happens in my house!
My mother on the other hand prefers to eat the cereal on top of her favorite yogurt, which is laden with dyes and processed ingredients, but I will take every inch of success that I can with my family and be happy that they have given up almost all the commercial cereals!
For a printable recipe click
here.
I love that this is made with what I like to call real ingredients, ones that we almost always have in the kitchen. I admit I am most likely to be out of sugar.....I have a sweet tea addiction and can't help it. These are the perfect stage to make banana bread; I love buying the brown ones from the store when they are deeply discounted and make up some to freeze. Getting bananas at the perfect stage helps with flavor, but if they are a little worse than these they will still work great. If they have turned to liquid mush then it's past time and best to freeze for smoothies later.
Contrary to most people's thoughts I do not pre mix the dry ingredients and jump right in. So throw the butter and sugar in the bowl and get to mixing. After the butter and sugar are well mixed add the egg and mix well. Once the egg is mixed in begin adding the bananas. I wanted to make sure that you saw the inside of the bananas since they look a little worse for the wear in the last photo. These are soft and I cut off any really brown areas. Then I just mix the bananas in until they are broken up, but not completely demolished. Leave some of the chunks for little surprises in the bread. 
Because the best part of comfort food is the ease, at this point just begin throwing in the dry ingredients. I try to separate the baking soda and baking powder but if I am in a hurry I just go with it and it always seems to work out. Once the flour, baking soda, and baking powder are mixed in add the 5 tablespoons of milk and mix until there are no pools of milk. Once everything is mixed together you are ready to put it into the pans. At this point I usually think oh no I forgot to grease the pans and I do love the bread to slide right out. So out comes the greatest invention ever...well at times like this I think this is the greatest invention.....the flour spray, oh how I love you. I use medium sized pans so I spray 2 real quick and divide the batter evenly. I jiggle the pans a little if the batter isn't spreading out evenly but that happens rarely. 
If you know me really well you know that I hate high electric bills, so I do not pre-heat the oven. Just turn it onto 350 degrees, and put the pans into the oven. My oven takes about 5 minutes to get up to 350 so I just set the timer for 45 minutes and walk away. After 45 minutes you should have some really great smelling bread that is a nice golden brown and slightly cracked on the top. I also don't always check the inside if it looks like it does on the right. After about 5-10 minutes I will remove the bread from the pan. If you don't it will begin to sweat and you will have soggy bread.
