Hi all! So I was trying to remember the last time I had cereal and I couldn't even think of when I ate it last. I love cereal but I have yet to find one that is up to my standards with ingredients. I've searched in regular grocery stores to food co-ops to farmers markets and still cannot find any cereal worthy to buy. Even organic cereal has ingredients where you can't pronounce them so eventually I became a little frustrated and just quit looking. I've seen granola sold at farmers markets with the minimal ingredients but then I think, "Well I could just make that myself." So, finally I quit pouting and made my own cereal this morning! I have a feeling I will be making these quite often because they're not just good for having as cereal but also perfect on your yogurt or taking them for an on-the-go snackie poo. My mom will love that I just said that, we make fun of her for saying that at the end of her words. She claims that it just slips out. I miss that woman!
Last night I made my own dried fruit to put in these clusters because it's hard for me to find dried fruit that doesn't have added sugar in them. I also just wanted to try dehydrating my fruit since I've never done it before.
- I cut up my bananas and strawberries very thin because I knew my cluster balls were going to be quite small. Place parchment paper(not pictured) on baking sheet and put your cut up fruit on the parchment paper. Make sure your fruit is not touching each other. I set my oven to 200 degrees and dehydrated(baked) my fruit for about 1-1/2 hours.
- Let cool before breaking apart the dried fruit to put in your clusters. I made my fruit last night so I just put them in a container.
I woke up this morning super excited to get this recipe going! I wasn't even exactly sure how I was going to make them and if I wanted it to be a more crumbly granola or rolled into balls. I decided to roll them into tiny ball shapes because I thought it would be nice to be able take them to campus with me as a snack later in my day.
You have to have some patience when rolling these babies because it does take a little bit of time since they are so small. I'm pretty close up on this picture so they don't look very small but trust me they are and it took awhile to get them all rolled ~20 min. While you're rolling, make sure you have your oven preheating at 300 degrees so the oven is ready to go.
-Bake at 300 degrees for 15 minutes and let cool. I set mine in my freezer for 5 minutes so I could put them in my milk and eat them right away because at that point I was getting a little hangry(angry + hungry, it's a real thing). Kidding, sort of. It's a real situation in my life anyway!
Since the clusters are pretty dense, they do not float like normal cereal does. They just sink and you have to search for them at the bottom of your bowl but that's ok. I'm going to try make these last at least 3 days. We will see how that goes because they're so dang good! Not to toot my own horn but they are awesome. I really hope I inspire some of you to make these and to try a new kind of "cereal" , use them in your yogurt, or for whatever you desire. Bon appetit!
Ingredients:
- 1 cup old fashioned oatmeal
- 1 tbsp. ground flax
- 1/4 cup coconut palm sugar (substitute: honey)
- 1/4 cup almond flour (substitute: whole wheat flour or oat flour)
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tbsp. chia seeds
- 1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 tsp. almond extract
- 1 tbsp. melted coconut oil (substitute: olive oil)
- 2 tbsp. slivered almonds
- 1 dried banana & about 5 dried strawberries
Have a great Wednesday!
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