A Sweet Breakfast Date

I adore breakfast dates with friends.

When a certain breakfast-loving friend and I get together, she always orders muesli or porridge. She can't help herself and I love that about her. She just adores muesli. What's more, my friend cannot find the splendid, wholesome muesli varieties we have in Australia back home in the USA, so whenever she's home she gets her fix. I get that. And obviously I knew I would be making muesli when my friend and her husband came for a sweet breakfast date at our home yesterday.

When you really love your muesli-loving friends, you take the oats and nuts and coconut and dream it into toasty granola. You serve it with yoghurt, because this is something your friend also adores. And you make a cashew cream to go with because you had a glut of cashews lying around and why not? Defrosting some raspberries adds a little colour to the table the same way a bunch of flowers will, but you get to eat the raspberries...so that's clearly a more desirable decoration.

It's a special breakfast date, so you add a generous dab of butter and a drizzle of maple syrup to the bananas as they caramelise in the pan. And because you really love your friend, you add a splash of rum to the bananas.

Breakfasting right with friends. That's what long weekends are for.

Cashew Cream

Note: you need to start this recipe the night before serving.

Ingredients
2 cups Cashews (raw, unsalted)
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract

Optional extras: 2 medjool dates, pitted and softened in boiling water and/or pure maple syrup. Some cinnamon or ground cardamom would be lovely, too.

Method
1. Place the cashews in a large bowl and cover generously with water. Leave to soak overnight.
2. In the morning, rinse the cashews and place in a food processor with the water and vanilla. Puree until smooth, stopping the processor to scrape down the sides intermittently. Taste and add sweeteners and spices as desired. For a thinner cream, simply add more water.
3. Store in an airtight container in the fridge and use within a few days. Serve with granola, alongside cakes as a vegan cream or even as a cake ganache/icing.

Butter Rum Bananas

Ingredients
3 Bananas
30g Unsalted Butter
1 tablespoon Pure Maple Syrup
1 tablespoon Rum

Method
1. Slice the bananas in half lengthways and then in two or three segments (depending on the size of your bananas, for larger ones, cut them in half and then into thirds)
2. Melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. When hot, add the bananas flat side down. Cook for a couple of minutes until golden and caramelised, then use tongs to flip them on their other side and cook for a couple more minutes until golden and caramelised.
3. Drizzle the maple syrup in the pan and then the rum. Cook for a minute until the bananas get coated in a sweet, sticky sauce, then remove them from the pan to a serving platter.

My present favourite granola recipe (link).

Heidi xo