ALMOND BUTTER & CARDAMOM GRANOLA

Ooey-gooey, crunchy, nutty, warming vegan almond butter granola recipe ...

This recipe is something special. You know something is going to be dangerously good when you open the oven and a wafty smell of sweet cardamom-caramel catches your face and you look down to find the most beautiful, bubbly, ALIVE-with-deliciousness tray of granola staring back at you.

Sometimes I am just blown away with such a profound sense of gratitude towards good food. What a pleasure it truly is. Imagine how dull life would be if we never tasted anything? Or if we just consumed pills to nourish us? Making and enjoying good, hearty, wholesome food is one of my biggest loves in this life. And this granola definitely makes the cut.

My relationship to food wasn’t always so positive. In High School I struggled a lot with my relationship to food – but slowly over the last four years, I have deepened my understanding and knowledge of how food can be used as something to brighten your life, express joy and love for those around you and yourself and most of all be a tool to bring about profound healing – on a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual level. To me, nourishing myself with delicious, good-for-you foods is one of the highest forms of expressing love and respect for myself. Another component of having a healthy relationship to food is to eat mindfully. This concept was a complete game-changer and I will actually write an article about it for the blog soon.

This is a super versatile recipe and is great to make in bulk so that you can have it as a snack while on the go, or with your breakfast or as part of a trail mix or even as part of a dessert crumble!

Some of my favorite uses for this recipe so far is:

·      As a crunchy topping to my smoothies and/or smoothie bowls

·      As a breakfast cereal served with sliced banana, passion fruit, dates and a plant based milk of your choice

·      As part of my favorite trail mix (recipe for that coming soon, too!) which lives in my bag for whenever I need a pick-me-up and FAST. 

Time for the magic-making to begin …

Ingredients

·      3.5 cups of gluten-free, rolled oats

·      1/3 cup toasted almond butter

·      1/3 cup sweetener of choice (maple syrup/agave/honey/brown rice syrup etc)

·      1-2 tablespoons coconut oil (you can most likely simply omit this for an oil-free recipe)

·      1-1.3 teaspoons of ground cardamom (depending on how much you like cardamom)

·      ¾ teaspoon of ground Himalayan salt (or salt of choice)

·      3-4 tablespoons raisins (or other dried fruit of choice)

·      2 tablespoons flax seeds (optional)

·      1 tablespoon of chia seeds (optional)

·      3 tablespoons chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

1.   Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

2.   In a big bowl place the rolled oats, cardamom and salt. Mix well.

3.   In a sauce pan combine the coconut oil (if you’d like to make this recipe oil-free I am sure you can just omit this, I am yet to try it out without the coconut oil but once I do I will let you know how it turns out), almond butter and sweetener and melt together until emulsified and thinned out. Turn off heat once it is bubbling and fragrant.

4.   Now pour your liquid mixture over the rolled oats and mix well. (Pro tip: It’s really fantastic to do this part with cleaned hands so that you can lick your fingers afterwards for a delicious snack. Don’t worry, I got your back).

5.   Once it’s all mixed well, spread the mixture out onto your baking tray in one even layer (this is important to ensure that some areas don’t bake faster than others). Once your oven is at the correct temperature, place the tray into the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Once it’s been in for 15 minutes, take the tray out and mix it all up creating an even layer again and then chuck in the raisins on top and place back into the oven for 5-10 minutes. It’s important to watch the granola at this point as it can burn fast. I ended up baking mine for another 8 minutes and it came out perfectly.

6.   If you like your raisins slightly more toasted, like I do, you can either add them in at a slightly earlier stage (perhaps like 10 minutes into the first 15-minute baking stint) or you can toast them in a pan just as is until they come out toasted and chewy and then add them to the granola after baking.

7.   Once the granola has baked, you can add all of the other ingredients (chia seeds, flax seeds, walnuts and raisins – if you haven’t added the raisins already).

8.   Let cool and then place into a mason jar with a sealable lid and ENJOY!

P.S it’s also a fantastic recipe to double up so you have bulk supply at hand whenever you need and/or as a great gift to a friend. 

Much love

Maria