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Healthy recipe for homemade raisin bran that is a more nutritious and digestible cold cereal compared with commercial brands.
This delicious alternative to commercial Raisin Bran uses soaked flour and fruit as the sweetener.
It is eminently more healthy than any brand you can buy from the store. This includes organically certified versions.
You will immediately feel the difference in your stomach after eating it.
You will feel full with just a small bowl and digest more fully, staying satiated much longer.
The flour is soaked dairy-free, but feel free to substitute yogurt for the water portion if you prefer to add additional fat and protein.
What About the Sugar?
For those of you concerned that there is a whole cup of date syrup in this recipe, I would suggest that it is not excessive or blood sugar spiking to the point where you get a crash later.
Let’s go through the math…
One cup is 16 tablespoons.
Since there are 20 servings in the recipe, each serving has 0.8 of a tablespoon of date syrup. This equates to 10g of fruit sugar. The raisins add another four for a total of 14g per serving.
By comparison, a medium banana has the same amount of fruit sugar at 14g and a medium apple has about 19g of fruit sugar.
It is true that it is best to stay at 36g of sugar or less per day from all sources including fruit to avoid immune system suppression.
Thus, eating a serving of this homemade raisin bran for breakfast is going to be slightly more than one-third of that amount for the whole day.
One thing to keep in mind is that the glycemic index of date syrup is much lower than the GMO white sugar or high fructose corn syrup in commercial versions.
Key point: The good amount of healthy fat in the recipe which is missing from commercial versions lowers this glycemic index even further!
Thus, from a digestive and overall ingredient perspective, I would consider this homemade raisin bran to be a far healthier option than any brand you could buy, including organic.
Homemade Raisin Bran
Recipe for a homemade raisin bran that is sugar and dairy free that your family will enjoy that will nourish and digest much better than commercial versions.
Ingredients
- 6 cups flour preferably freshly ground
- 3 cups filtered water
- 2 Tbl lemon juice
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 cup coconut oil
- 1 cup date syrup
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 Tbl fresh cinnamon
- 1 cup raisins
Instructions
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Blend the flour in the filtered water plus lemon juice. Mix well. Soak on the kitchen counter (covered with a cloth and rubber band) for 24 hours.
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Mix the remaining ingredients into the soaked batter. Pour batter into (2) 9×13 pans coated with coconut oil. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 °F/ 177 °C or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Do NOT overbake else the cereal will turn out too hard.
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Let cool and then crumble onto baking sheets and dehydrate at 200 °F/ 93 °C for about 24 hours.
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Take out dried cereal off the top every few hours so as not to overdry.
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Mix in raisins once the cereal is completely dried and cooled.
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Store cereal in an airtight container in the fridge.
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Serve alone as a snack or in a bowl with milk of choice.
Could this recipe be made with a gluten free flour? If so, which kind(s)?
Not sure as I’ve not tried it before. It would probably work. I usually use einkorn for this recipe. Here’s my homemade gluten free blend that I use most often that has no gums. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/sprouted-gluten-free-flour-recipe/
Hi – just wondering if you still should soak the flour if you are using a sprouted flour? I can’t wait to make this!
Normally, you do not need to soak flour if it is sprouted. However, I would do it for this recipe because the batter will be too dry otherwise.