Everything But The… Bircher Museli is gluten-free and vegan, packed with oats, protein rich nuts and seeds and sweetness and fibre from dried apricots. Left to soak overnight with plant based milk and a crisp grated apple, then mixed with coconut yoghurt and berries the next morning, this is a rocket fuelled breakfast.
I am having a real love affair with oats at the moment. If I don’t have a good handful of gluten-free oats in whatever I’m eating then really it’s not worth bothering with. I’ve been making batches and batches of 15 minute Peanut Butter Oaty Chocolate Cookies which I’ll be posting about next week and they have been my main source of food over the past few days, all washed down with home-brewed Oatmeal Matcha Lattes which I also can’t get enough of. Another post coming your way soon is the next instalment of my Guide to Gluten-Free Flours series which discusses my favourite flour of them all – oat flour – it’s all about the flavour! In short, everything is coming up oatmeal for me at the moment. Then as the icing on the cake there is this Everything But The… Bircher Museli which I’ve been devouring for breakfast most mornings since Beau was born.
Now, I say breakfast but when you are awake virtually 24/7 then you have to ask yourself the philosophical question, what is breakfast really? And also, who am, where am I and what day is it? The world is one big fuzz at the moment and I’m breaking no fasts as I’m eating throughout the night hours to keep me awake so I don’t fall asleep on top of my baby. Although now we know why he doesn’t like lying down and only feeds in fits and starts – he has the most terrible acid reflux and unless he is upright against my chest in the sling then he is pretty unhappy. As am I. Since I had debilitating acid reflux for most of my pregnancy I can more than sympathise with the little guy but it is so upsetting to see him in such pain when I’m nursing him. And then even more upsetting when it all comes back up afterwards. All that effort for nothing. It’s a struggle for both of us.
We are trying to sort out the right medication and dosage levels with the GP to ease his reflux but it’s certainly taking time to work out how best to treat it. It’s certainly not an unusual problem in babies so at least we know eventually it will correct itself but in the meantime feeding Beau and getting him to keep it down is my main priority and sleep is an abstract concept of days gone by.
During these brain fogged times oats have become my new best friend. I have always enjoyed them but my digestive system couldn’t cope with them for the longest while, even the gluten-free ones. I don’t know if it’s because of all the work I have been doing to heal my gut but lately I’ve been gradually incorporating oats back into my diet and so far I seem to be quite well on them which of course has led to obsession.
Back before my gluten intolerance was diagnosed I ate Bircher Museli for breakfast every day. I loved it. So easy to make a big batch of the dry museli mix on your Sunday prep and then every evening take a couple of minutes to cover a portion with milk and leave it overnight to soak in the fridge. The next morning I would mix in a bit of yoghurt to make it really creamy and toss in a bunch of berries. So delicious. Of course back then it was regular oats, cows milk and yoghurt I used in the recipe and little did I know it was that seemingly healthy breakfast which was the source of my crippling digestive troubles later on in the day. It was a long road to understand that one.
Now that I’m more informed as to what foods my body is happiest with, I use gluten-free oats and leave out the bran in the museli mix. I then sub in a bunch of nuts and seeds for nutrition, flavour and crunch and also use plant based yoghurt and milk which I find so much easier to digest. Also because of Beau’s reflux it makes sense for me to keep to a lactose free diet so I’m not exacerbating his troubles.
I like my Bircher Museli to be ultra creamy so I add a generous amount of milk and yoghurt to my oats but if you like your oats a little sturdier then just add a third less milk and yoghurt.
In fact the whole recipe can really be adapted any which way to suit your tastes, intolerances and larder contents. If you don’t have dried apricots then dates or figs will be good too. Pumpkin seeds can be changed to sunflower seeds. The almonds and pecans could just as easily be walnuts and hazelnuts and if you don’t like coconut then just leave it out. Equally if you don’t have an issue with lactose then feel free to use cow’s milk and yoghurt. Although if you would like to try something new then I do really recommend the plant based alternatives which impart so much flavour. My favourite, as noted below, is a mix of coconut and almond milk with cooling coconut yoghurt. You can use the natural flavoured coconut yoghurt but if you want a real treat then the vanilla coconut yoghurt is outstanding.
The recipe below though, as it stands, is my preferred way to incorporate all the delicious nutritious taste I need to get me through my current, and it seems never ending, sleep deprivation.
Everything But The... Bircher Museli
Ingredients
Museli Mix
- 275 g gluten-free jumbo rolled oats
- 80 g dried apricots chopped
- 50 g pumpkin seeds
- 40 g almonds roughly chopped
- 40 g pecans roughly chopped
- 30 g ground flaxseed
- 30 g desiccated coconut
- 25 g chia seeds
- 20 g sesame seeds
Bircher Museli (serves 1)
- 40 g museli
- 60 g almond milk
- 60 g coconut milk
- ½ granny smith apple grated
- 60 g coconut yoghurt
- Handful of mixed berries
Instructions
Museli Mix
- Mix all the ingredients together at the beginning of the week then keep in a large glass storage jar until needed.
Bircher Museli
- In a small cereal bowl pour the milks over the museli then stir in the grated apple.
- Place cling film over the top then leave in the fridge overnight to soak.
- The next morning stir in the coconut yoghurt and sprinkle the berries over the top to serve.
Hello, so lovely of you to drop by. I am Georgina. I bake a lot, eat a lot and love writing about my gluten-free kitchen adventures here. I run a gluten-free cake business but am mostly kept busy with my 2 cats, 1 dog, 1 husband, 2 gorgeous sons and twin baby girls.
