Give yourself a quick, sugar-free, energy boost for breakfast

Oh my this is good! Homemade granola – just add Greek yoghurt, berries and a spoon. A healthy,  sugar-free, clean-eating dose of brekky on the go thanks to 10 minutes prep and half and hour in the oven.

I recently survived, (or should I say enthusiastically embraced!) 50 days of clean-eating – a sugar-free, alcohol-free, processed foods-free fat loss challenge. I did indeed lose plenty of fat – half a stone in fact – and total of 20 centimetres of my good self. I felt, and still feel, better than I have in years. I can highly recommend giving it a go. Far less challenging than I thought it would be.

However, one of the key elements of rising to this challenge was finding a quick and easy to prepare breakfast. At first I was faffing around with porridge or eggs of a morning – which simply isn’t practical when trying to get both me and Miss Poppet out the door. I needed a breakfast I could throw together in a hurry and found the answer to my prayers courtesy of Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar programme.

I got a real sense of satisfaction from making this super-healthy granola, and it was what kept me on the straight and narrow – instead of reaching for some toast I reached for my tuppaware container of granola.

Here are the ingredients (I adapted Sarah’s recipe slightly):

• Flaked coconut (my local Waitrose didn’t have any so I used desiccated coconut, but then for my second batch found flaked in my local health food shop)
• Oats (good quality rolled oats)
• Various chopped nuts (brazil, almonds, walnuts)
• Chia seeds, or sesame if you can’t find chia (I found them in a health food shop)
• A couple of tablespoons of melted coconut oil
• A teaspoon of cinnamon

All you need to do is coat all the nuts etc in the melted coconut oil, spread on a baking tray and bake at 120 degrees centigrade (fan oven) for about half an hour to 45 minutes. I gave mine a stir every 10 minutes or so to make sure it all baked evenly and waited for it to go a rich brown colour – super crunchy.

Leave to cool, store in an airtight container in your pantry and it’s ready to chuck on top of some full-fat Greek yoghurt (the clean-eating world is not a fan of processed, low-fat fake food). Add a handful of blueberries and raspberries for a pop  of freshness taste and colour, and granola’s your aunty!

Have you tried making this super-healthy breakfast boost? Let me know how you get on, I’d love to hear what you think, and what personalisations you made.