Homemade granola

I forget how I first found http://smittenkitchen.com/, but I've been following the blog for a while now.  So when I discovered that there was going to be a book, I was bound to buy it.  I had to wait an extra few months for the UK version, but it finally arrived. 

Now, since my honeymoon in America in 2010 and a rather memorable breakfast featuring granola near the Seaport museum in New York, I've had a soft spot for granola.  I recently bit the bullet and tried making my own and it's really very easy.  But it does generally have a fair bit of sugar and fat of one kind or another.  So, I was interested to see that Deb had a recipe for chunky granola with walnuts and cherries that had less fat and a bit less sugar. 

Making your own granola is pretty quick and easy. The time consuming task is chopping nuts up (unless you use flaked almonds that is) and the tricky part is not overlooking it, which I'm not sure I've entirely mastered. However the results have still been great. 

I used cherries (mixture of sour cherries from a health food store, which were super nice and super expensive, and morello cherries from Sainsbury's that for some reason had been soaked in apple juice) and pecans. I also used maple syrup, which I think was Deb's original suggestion but which has been anglicised to golden syrup (why? I mean I love golden syrup, but it's not maple syrup, is it?). 

I like my granola with yoghurt and fruit (banana, pear, berries (when summer arrives), stewed apple), but it is also good just with milk.

Happy baking!