Cranberry Granola in the spotlight
People (myself included) love to tell you about the awards they win, but not so much about the ones they don’t. Well, I will let you into a little secret… I entered my Cranberry Granola into the Great Taste Awards 2022. To my utter dismay, my best-selling granola of both 2022 and 2023 didn’t win an award! The judges’ feedback was, of course, extremely valuable and gave me lots to think about. Strangely, though, the cinnamon flavour, which apparently ‘overwhelmed’ the judges, is one of the main reasons customers tell me they like this granola…
Cranberry Granola has been nudged off the best-seller spot this year by Scottish Raspberry & Coconut Granola, but it’s still a firm customer favourite. Each year, it seems to increase in popularity as we head into autumn.
As you may know, Nutty Granola and Coconut & Almond Granola were the first and second granolas I ever made. Cranberry Granola was the third. Early customer feedback indicated that not everyone likes, or can eat, nuts and that a fruit-based granola would be a good third offering. And so I set about experimenting with apricots, ginger, pineapple, sesame, lemongrass, mango, papaya… you name it, I gave it a try. In the end, it was an orange and cinnamon-based granola with cranberries that the taste-testers preferred.
For the Cranberry Granola base, as with all my other granolas, I use Scottish wholegrain jumbo oats from Aberdeenshire. These big oatflakes hold their shape throughout the mixing and baking processes and provide a creamy texture in the finished product.
To the jumbo oats, I add ground cinnamon, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds and then drizzle over a blend of warm honey and a little rapeseed oil. In the beginning, I used to zest and juice dozens of oranges for each batch, then bubble the juice down to a thick concentrate. This would be added to the granola base to give the orange flavour. After years of doing this, I came across an amazing concentrated orange oil with a natural orange flavour, which does the same job and saves me literally hours of zesting, juicing and reducing. I had to make the switch!
I then gently bake the granola to a nice, tangy crunch. When the granola is cool, I add dried cranberries, which taste both sweet and tart. They pair really well with the cinnamon and orange granola.
For breakfast, serve your Cranberry Granola with natural yoghurt, bananas, stewed apple or pears. Or enjoy it with milk if you like cinnamon-flavoured milk at the end.
I hope you appreciate that little insight into how I make my Cranberry Granola.
Last but not least, a huge thank you to all of my customers who took the time to leave these reviews of the Cranberry Granola they bought:
“This is my favourite one to date, you can taste the orange and has plenty of cranberries. Nice and tangy and chewy but I like it that way. I love this with fruits and yoghurt.”
“I love this granola. Great flavours.”
“Very tasty combination of orange and cranberry, a really fruity and delicious granola.”
“This was a repeat order as we enjoyed the first bag so much. Far tastier than supermarket granola.”
“Very crisp, nice size oats and pieces, great flavours (not too sweet – very important for me), healthy recipe. Delivered promptly.”
