Healthy. Wholesome. All natural. This beet-carrot granola with naturally colored blue cashew cream was born out of a huge desire to create a super healthy veggie-filled crunchy & sweet granola and something crazy amazing to go with it. This blue cream is truly magical 🙂
It’s made magically BLUE with all natural food coloring. The inspiration for this beautiful blue comes from one of my favorite vegan food bloggers and genius recipe creators: Natalie from feastingonfruit.com Watch her super helpful and fun tutorial video on how to create this blue color here. All you need is red cabbage and baking soda!
As for the granola – I’ve made beet granola before, but this time I wanted to add another sweet vegetable to the recipe. Carrot was an obvious choice. Both of these root vegetables are naturally sweet, and taste even sweeter when cooked. In this recipe, there’s no need to cook the vegetables beforehand, just grate them (raw) and mix into the granola batter. The lovely sweetness of the vegetables combined with coconut syrup and some cinnamon & cardamom makes for an amazing unique flavor. And the crunch – it’s perfect if you ask me (and my kids).
About the blue coloring: it’s extremely sensitive to other ingredients (it won’t stay as beautifully blue if you add e.g.syrup or lemon juice to it!) so I’ve not added anything else but cashews, coconut cream and water to the cashew cream. You can’t taste red cabbage in the cream, but it is not very sweet so if you want it sweeter (but still blue), just add some granola and drizzle some syrup on top.
Now let’s go and cook some red cabbage 🙂
- Beet-carrot granola
- Dry ingredients
- 1 cup gluten-free rolled oats
- 1,5 cup chopped nuts (e.g.almonds, pecans, walnuts)
- ½ cup pumpkin seeds (or other seeds / more chopped nuts)
- 3 tbsp chia seeds
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- ¼ tsp salt
- Wet ingredients
- 1 small beetroot (~1/4 cups grated beetroot, liquid squeezed out)
- 1 large carrot (~1/2 cups grated carrot, liquid squeezed out)
- 4 tbsp coconut syrup
- 3 tbsp almond butter
- 2 tbsp coconut oil (room temperature, scoopable)
- Naturally colored blue cashew cream
- ½ cups cashews (soak in warm water 2-4 hours or overnight)
- ¼ cups water
- 2 tbsp coconut cream (the creamy part of a chilled coconut milk can)
- ~1 tsp BLUE coloring made from red cabbage. See feastingonfruit.com for instructions.
- Beet-carrot granola: Preheat oven to 300 F/150 C.
- Grate beetroot and carrot and squeeze out the liquid (you can use this leftover liquid in smoothies, overnight oats, yogurt etc).
- Chop nuts.
- Combine all dry ingredients.
- Mix all wet ingredients thoroughly in a separate bowl.
- Combine wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix well with a spoon.
- Pour the granola mixture in a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Mix the granola mixture by hand so you get all the dry bits and pieces covered with the wet ingredients. Spread the mixture into an even layer.
- Bake at 300 F/150 C for 15 min. Flip the granola over and turn the baking sheet around. Continue baking for 15 min and flip the granola over again. Turn the baking sheet around. Bake for another 15 min until the granola is dry and crunchy. Let cool at least 30 minutes in the baking sheet before removing the granola. Store in a glass jar.
- Naturally colored blue cashew cream: Preparations: chill coconut milk can in the fridge overnight . Soak cashews for at least 2 hours. Prepare blue food coloring while the cashews are soaking (and granola in the oven). Watch instructions on feastingonfruit.com (link above in ingredient list).
- Blend all cashew cream ingredients EXCEPT blue coloring in a high-speed blender until smooth and creamy (add more liquid if needed).
- Add blue food coloring little by little mixing with a spoon: start at ⅛ tsp and see how the color changes. Add coloring until you have the desired color, about 1 tsp. NOTE: If you want the color to be blue, I recommend not adding any other ingredients to the cashew cream.
- Enjoy this magical cashew cream with beet-carrot granola and a drizzle of syrup, if you need it to be sweeter.
Yippee yay yahooooo!!! You have no idea how excitedly I’ve been waiting to see what blueness you create Tiina! It turned out more beautiful than all the things I had imagined, I always love your beautiful colorful topping touch <3 This might just be the most majestic granola I've ever seen! Sooner or later you are going to work your beet pink magic on every food there is 🙂 You are the best, thank you so very much for trying it and for the shoutout. Happy Monday! xx
Yayyyy so happy you like it!! For a while it was all blue food experiments here 🙂 To be honest, kids got kind of tired of the red cabbage smell here..hehe. And the granola surely is a yummy one!! The color is quite cute, and it also tastes amazing. Isn’t it sneaky to add vegetables in almost every food 😉 And yes be prepared for some more pink beet magic coming along in autumn..I simply can’t get enough of the color. And will definitely make this blue color also, but perhaps I’ll wait for a while – blue coconut cream overdose here 🙂 Happy week to you!!
Hy dear, wow this looks so amazing!
I wish you a wonderful day.
Love Klara xx
Hey beautiful! Thank you so much 🙂 This color is pretty crazy amazing hehe. I hope you have a lovely day too <3
Hi dear,
I am in love with your beetroot granola! Beetroot granola was one of the first recipes I made for my blog, and it’s been a favorite of mine ever since. I’ve added some apple puree as a sweetener, but maple syrup sounds just as delicious. What’s your all-time favorite granola recipe? I love experimenting with different kinds, but I always find myself coming back to the simplest recipe: coconut oil, honey (or maple syrup) and cinnamon over oats, nuts and seeds.
Sending lots of love from Germany,
xx
Lynn
Hi Lynn 🙂 I really love beetroot granola!! It is really one of my favorite granolas (not only for the color!). I’ve been making it a lot the past year, sometimes with carob as an extra sweetener and with dark choco chips – so yummy. But this time I really wanted to add carrot, too, and it worked out perfectly!! We eat granola almost every day, kids love it so much 🙂 Wishing you a lovely week! Lots of love <3
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