Instructions

1. Dry the soaked nuts on a towel before anything wet meets them. They come out of a soak carrying a surprising amount of water, and every drop lengthens a run that is already long.
2. Pulse the nuts in short bursts and stop while the pieces are still uneven. Taken to a fine grind the granola packs into a paste rather than staying as loose clusters.
3. Warm the coconut oil with the maple syrup and honey only until it pours. Set coconut oil will not spread through a dry mixture, and you will find white flecks in the finished batch.
4. Pour that over the nuts, seeds, coconut, cinnamon and cardamom and turn it until everything glistens. The oil is what carries the spice, so a patch it misses stays plain.
5. Hold the dried fruit back until the very end and stir it in by hand. It is already dry, and sitting in syrup it softens and glues the clusters into one sheet.
6. Spread it across lined trays one layer of nuts deep, not two. This single decision is what decides whether the run takes the time stated or twice it.
7. Dry at 46 °C for 24 hours, breaking the crust up with a spatula about a third of the way through so the syrup cannot set into a solid sheet.
8. Test a cooled spoonful. It should crack between the teeth with no chew left in the coconut at all, and coconut is the last thing on this tray to let go of its water.
9. An airtight jar in a dark cupboard holds it six weeks. The sesame and pumpkin seeds go first, and the smell of them turning is sharp and unmistakable.