Oatmeal with Roasted Apples / Banana Bread

A cool spring morning is a delight; and a unique opportunity to enjoy a hearty comforting breakfast without the accompanying bad weather. Here are a couple of breakfasts that will warm you up in the morning and keep you going all day. Before you know it - it will be too hot for any breakfast more substantial then a pint of fresh fruit, (strawberries are coming soon!) or a bowl of cereal. Meanwhile, warm up in the morning with these two wholesome breakfasts.

Oatmeal with the works! Steel cut oatmeal topped with bananas, raisins, cinnamon, milk, and Roasted Apples with Pecans. The picture you see here is the virtuous version; while hearty and scrumptious, definitely throw in a pat of butter and a generous sprinkle of brown sugar if your feeling at all indulgent.

Roasted apples is more a technique then a recipe. (Depending on your taste, you can adjust the quantities and cooking times at will.) Roasting does not merely soften the apples, but rather transforms their texture from crisp, to softly chewy. Sprinkling them with sugar or honey, cinnamon and pecans creates a sort of "apple pie" topping that is great on oatmeal.

roasted apples with pecans:

apples
roasted pecans
butter, cut into small pieces
sugar (or sweetener of choice)
cinnamon
pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Quarter and core rinsed apples. cut into even sized 1 inch pieces. Mix with sugar and salt and spread on greased roasting pan. Sprinkle with butter, pecans and cinnamon and roast for approximately 45 minutes, stirring 3/4 of the way through. (If you like them with a bit more tooth resistance roast for 30 minutes, a bit softer: go for 60 minutes)

Another great breakfast treat (or anytime of the day treat) is banana bread. So fast to whip up, with such a delicious and long lasting payoff. Great hot out of the oven with butter (if your an early riser), but equally good toasted or cold, slathered with sweet and creamy butter. You'll notice I prefer my banana bread with butter, but this sweet, moist loaf can easily stand alone. I am not a baker, and so admit to getting the recipe for this banana bread from Simply Recipes. I've tried many banana bread recipes and this is the best I've made. I love when you make something, and it lives up to or exceeds all of your expectations. From the first bite I thought, " this is what I want banana bread to taste like." I should say I have yet to try baking my moms banana bread recipe, and would have to compare the results. So if your reading this mom, send me your recipe, and we shall see whose recipe takes the cake... er, bread.


(A few notes: I only altered this simple and great recipe with the addition of 1/3 cup roasted salted pecans. I used three large bananas and the full cup of sugar. Also, I took the loaf from its pan after removing it from the oven and let it cool on its side or bottom to encourage the development of a crust. It is also important to mix the batter gently, only until just incorporated, and bake only until just done)

Banana Bread recipe:
(from Simply Recipes)

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Mom's Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

I have to admit, I'm not that great a baker. I seldom admit to being bad at things, but when I taste the creations my mom effortlessly puts together on the weekends while also cleaning the whole house, doing the laundry, the taxes, being fashionable, wrangling grandkids, etc. etc., I realize that I'm a total novice. The up-side of this is, at the moment, I can leave that department to the other, more talented, people in my life. Luckily for me, I'm currently visiting my fam in northern Wisconsin, and so have easy access to my Mom, the best baker I know, I've already taken a mental note to write down a handful of amazing deserts that I will later try to replicate on my own. Plenty of fodder for future posts. I promise to mix in posts from my friends that have desert skills along with my less skilled attempts. We'll see maybe I'll surprise myself, or delude myself, either works.



















These are Healthy!
These have oatmeal in them, so there healthy,.. really,.. I promise. And they have chocolate: full of healthy antioxidants. And honey.. and peanut butter!! Wow, these could stand in for lunch.

Ok, I'll clarify, these are heart healthy, not in the way you think, although I believe I made a convincing case. But, in the way that I feel happy after eating them, which is why French people are so healthy, that and booze.

Oh, and butter, also plenty of that in these puppies. The combined effect is like a mix between a peanut butter/oatmeal cookie, and a toffee bar(another great Mom recipe to come) I know it sounds like a lot of different flavors, but they come together magically, yes I said magically, make them and you'll see. First your tastebuds are hit with the combined effect, most noticeably chocolate, and peanut butter, with on underlying richness. From that richness than emerges the flavors of butter/toffee, oats, honey, vanilla and even a little bit of a salty finish(something I can't get enough of in deserts) Each flavor makes a convincing case for being the star, but no one flavor ever wins, and the struggle is delicious. The texture is chewy, crumbly and moist. This complexity makes these bars dangerous. Unlike a more one dimensional treat, You can eat them pretty much unendingly, just ask my Dad.

These are not the kind of desert you will get at a fancy restaurant, but the kind you make for a potluck, or at your house when its cold, you have a great movie or show to watch, or your friends are coming over to play. The kind you make in a big sheet to share with your favorite people.

Mom says she got this recipe way back in the day along with a jar of honey from a farm stand. I believe they were called Grandma's Peanut Butter Bars. The bare bones recipe she received has been tweaked and expanded over the years, and so I've renamed them Mom's Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars. Here is the recipe I've put together from watching the master at work.





















This is my mom's collection of recipes, I love the wood grained notebook.


the recipe:

1 1/2 cups plus 1 tbsp. butter
2 cups light brown sugar
2/3 cup honey
2 1/2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups oatmeal (quick oats)
2 2/3 cups all purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup peanut butter (natural works great)
1 1/2 cups chopped milk chocolate, or milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 13 x 18" jelly roll pan with aluminum foil and grease with butter. In a saucepan, heat butter until just melted, add honey and vanilla. In a large bowl, mix brown sugar, oatmeal, flour, salt and baking soda, add butter mixture and stir until just incorporate. Gently spread on to lined pan, leaving a 1 cm gap along the outside edges. Bake 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Do not over bake. Remove from oven, let rest a few minutes to set up. Spoon small dabs of peanut butter over the surface, when softened, spread. Sprinkle on chopped chocolate, wait a few minutes to soften, and cut into 60 bars. Drag knife smoothly through chocolate to create a swirled effect.
Note: this is obviously a very large batch, but is required when your dealing with boys with large appetites. If you are not feeding a lot of people(or my family), you could easily make a half batch in a 9 x 13" pan.