Frugal Friday - homemade "Honey Bunches of Oats" cereal

HBoO is one of my *favorite* cereals. But it's usually expensive. This week, however, I figured out how to make a cheaper, less sugary version of it!

First, I had made a bunch of granola a couple of weeks ago by this recipe. It's a good recipe, but it's not a clumpy, pop-it-in-your-mouth kind of granola, it's more of a good topping for yogurt or ice cream. Or oatmeal, whatever. I was looking at it and realized that it made me think of the "bunches" part of the HBoO cereal that I love. Hmmmm.....

So, I went to the store and got some plain corn flakes. Brought it home and poured some in a large bowl, then mixed in the granola until the proportions look right. I don't have an airtight cereal container, but I do have several drink pitchers, so I'm storing it in there.

It's not as sweet as real HBoO, but if you've just got to have that sweetness, you could either buy frosted flakes, or just add a smidge of sugar to your bowl after you've poured your serving.

If I make this again, I'll leave the ginger out of the granola recipe. It's not too bad, but I'm not really fond of it, and the spices are a little much for the cereal, especially the ginger. If you don't want the cinnamony taste, you'd probably want to leave that out as well. It would taste more like real HBoO without the spices.



What else is frugal? Winning helpful things! Be sure to visit this post and throw your hat in the ring for a chance at a free homeschool notebooking set. Or visit this post to get a free sampler as well as coupon codes for our notebooking store! And when you're all done here, be sure to hop back over to Crystal's blog for more frugal goodness.