Mr. L and I really like those Starbucks breakfast sandwiches. When we're traveling, stopping and grabbing a coffee and sandwich in the morning is much easier and faster than stopping at a restaurant. Last year we went for a quick breakfast at a Starbucks only to find, in that area, they didn't carry the sandwiches. Mr. L grabbed an apple fritter while I grabbed one of their yogurt granola parfaits. SOOOO good, but SOOOO much sugar. Every now and then I treat myself to one of these and try not to think about the added sugar in the fruit, in the yogurt and in the granola...or the long list of ingredients of things I can't pronounce. While at Trader Joe's recently, I figured it might be easier to try to make them myself.
It's pretty simple. Fruit on the bottom, plain yogurt in the middle and some granola on top. The problem was trying to take as much sugar out of the equation as possible.
FRUIT: Wanting to keep it simple I figured frozen fruit would work the best. I picked up a bag of Trader Joe's Fancy Berry Medley. It's just blueberries, blackberries and raspberries. No sugar added (though there is natural sugar in the berries). Any fruit would do but this combo is my favorite.
YOGURT: I've had plain yogurt before, standard brand type stuff, and it's usually full of preservatives and though they are okay, I've found a new favorite. Fage Greek yogurt. YUMMY. After reading raves about the stuff on most blogs I gave it a try several years ago and fell in love. You can find it at a lot of grocery stores, I got mine at Trader Joe's. The taste is definitely different and a lot less sweet than the standard store brands. I used the all natural non-fat version in this dish. It comes in standard, 2% and 5% also. No added sugar but there is still some natural sugar.
GRANOLA: This was the hard part. I wanted granola similar to that found on the Starbucks parfaits which seemed to be simple granola. I found lots of granola with added nuts or fruits. And tons of sugar. I found a brand at Trader Joe's that I think comes the closest. It's Traders Joe's Pecan Praline Granola (whole grain oats with maple syrup). There were non-fat ones but they just didn't look like what I wanted. Didn't see any "sugar free" but that probably wouldn't have worked anyway. There is sugar in this but a lot less than most of the other brands I looked at.
MRS. L'S STARBUCKS YOGURT PARFAITS
1/2 cup frozen fruit, defrosted (but keep chilled)
1 5.3 oz container Fage Greek yogurt
1/4 cup granola
Layer the ingredients with fruit on the bottom, then yogurt, then granola. Serves 1
Note: You can vary the amount of ingredients depending on what you like.
Note: Even though I layer it, I tend to mix it all up before I chow down. Looks like a big blue mess at that point, but it still tastes good!
Ooh...this looks yummy. I've tried the TJ's brand of fruit parfait. Pretty good, but I never looked at the sugar content. And the parfaits at Mickey D's are probalby worse than the ones at Starbucks! ;-)
Posted by: Lara | November 12, 2007 at 08:26 PM
This looks oh so yummy and something that I can have! Thanks
Posted by: Jan | November 14, 2007 at 05:38 AM