Oatmeal pancakes

My favorite pancakes.

with Peanut Butter and Maple Syrup. I wonder if I could put that on oatmeal...

cereal break

just cereal today. :)

Maple and Butter

I showed this blog to a friend of mine and she had some favorite recipes that I thought I'd try. The first that she suggested was maple and butter. At first, I thought that was a little weird, but I put it on pancakes all the time.

My review: I suspect I may have added too much butter which made it very, very rich and indulgent. Maybe a little too much for me. I can see how it would be good in better hands though. I've thought about pecans and carmel sauce and the carmel sauce is not too far away from this.

Cardamom, Shaved Almonds, Almond Extract, Candied Orange Peel

I had the idea for this one shortly after I started realizing how much I liked oranges.

This requires advance preparation (ie. you must candy orange peel). I'll put the recipe for that below.

Here's the oatmeal recipe.

add oatmeal, salt, and cardamom to a bowl
add some shaved alonds (from Trader Joe's)
mix it while it's dry
add water and a bit of almond extract
add candied orange peel sauce
microwave on high for 3 minutes


candied orange peel sauce

do this for two oranges:

GETTING ORANGE PEELS

take an orange and make an incision through the skin from north pole to south pole.
continue through the south pole back to the north pole on the other side
you should have cut the peel, still on the orange, in two.
push your thumb into the cut and slowly pull the skin from the orange, going around the cut. Don't pull the skin all the way off, just loosen it.
go around again, but this time loosen a little more skin
go around again and repeat until your loosened enough that the peel comes off in a half-sphere shape.
put that half peel on a cutting board and flatten it. You may need to make an incision from the middle of the sphere to the edge so it's more like a fat 'V' shape
using a paring knife, slice off think strips of orange peel and set it in a bowl.
now do the same with the other half of the orange peel
now do all that with another orange

Don't eat the oranges. we need them for later.

You should have a big bowl of peels


REMOVING THE BITTER TASTE

take a sauce pan and fill it with cold water
add all the orange peels to it
bring it to a boil
pour it all into a colander
do this 3 times


CUT INTO BITS

You should have a big bowl of peels
with each strip, cut them into little bits of about 1/4 inch long. (I usually stack the strips together and cut through about 4 at a time to speed things up)


MAKE ORANGE JUICE
take your two oranges and press them with a juicer to get all the juice out of them


CANDYING THEM

Now, take a small sauce pan and add 2 parts sugar to one part orange juice (I usually do 2 cups sugar and add my OJ to a cup, then top off with water)
stir that in your sauce pan so it is all mixed
turn up the temperature below so it begins to boil, then turn it back down again
add all your orange peel and stir it into the syrup
by the way, that syrup is HOT, HOT, HOT. do not touch.
stir slowly with a WOODEN SPOON for 20 minutes (a plastic implement may melt)

let all the mitxture cool for about an hour. It will become more syrupy as it cools

pour into a tupperware container and put on your shelf for later use in...

...DELICIOUS OATMEAL!!!

Apples, Cinnamon, Raisins, and Hazlenuts (Filberts)

This is a little twist on the classic.

When I make it, I like to add a few raisins, and some hazlenuts ("filberts" if you are from the Pacific Northwest) for protein.

- put the dry oatmeal into a bowl, add a pinch of salt (according to recipe).
- Add the cinnamon and mix (it's harder to mix the cinnamon once there is water)
- To prepare the apple (one per cup of oatmeal),peel it and cut it into chunks right above the oatmeal (like you would bananas into cereal).
- sprinkle with a few raisins (not too many, they are a hint, not the main flavor)
- add a few hazlenuts
- add just less than twice as much water as oatmeal (about 175% as much)
- put it in a bowl in the microwave for 3 minutes on high.
- Top with brown (or maple) sugar

Alternatively, if you have a food dehydrator and time, buy an apple-peeler, slice up those apples and dehydrate them in advance. Adding dehydrated apple slices tastes just as good and there is even a little more texture to the apple than when you add raw ones. It's good!

Maple

If you are in New England, you will find in just about every store (and even some Interstate Rest Areas) - Maple products. Maple syrup, maple sugar, maple candy, maple cream cookies, ad infinitum. While I was there, I snagged some maple sugar and maple syrup.

They taste roughly equivalent with one being a powdered form of the other. Both are delicious and both found themselves in my oatmeal this morning. I think I needed something more than just plain maple to bring out a more intense flavor. Maple on it's own is prety mild. I got the Grade A syrup thinking it was the best, but to my surprise, it is not the most intense.

Maple Syrup Grades

Perhaps next time I'll add a darker grade (or a bit of Molasses).

Quaker's Instant, Sunflower Seeds, Dried Blueberries, Cinnamon, and Honey

Boy, do honey and sunflower seeds go well together! A little like Baklava or a really clear peanut brittle.

I could probably have done without the cinnamon. I usually add it when I put blueberries in, but this one's all about the honey and sunflower seeds.

Incidentally, you can get these great dried blueberries from Trader Joe's. The wild ones are the smallest and I think, the best for oatmeal. Sunflower seeds are just from Safeway.

Strawberries and Coconut

Today's oatmeal was So GOOD!

Grab a block of pressed coconut and sugar and freeze-dried strawberries. After putting the oatmeal, water, and salt in the bowl, shave off about an inch of that coconut bar and drop it in the water. Stir it around so it's good and mixed up.

Cook that in the micorwave for 3 minutes and when it comes out, add freeze-dried strawberries to it. You can get them at Trader Joe's.

It's the best Strawberries and Cream oatmeal I've ever had but mealy in a good way with the coconut.