I decided to start a food blog mainly for my own selfish benefit. I love cooking, but almost always play with the recipes a bit. This makes it difficult to replicate exactly. I always forget what spice made it great and what herb made it god awful. I also am more of an estimator than exact measurement kind of gal. Call it the ying to the yang of my chemistry degree. So, for each entry I'll link the original recipe and then talk about the tweaks I made, and which ones I want to make in the future! Sound good? Good.
First up is a dish i discovered via Reddit (of course). I really like this blog. I'm a pretty frugal person, which isn't so easy as an aspiring foodie. I also try to be pretty healthy in my day to day meals. Cue in Budgetbytes.blogspot.com. I get a lot of great ideas here
One of my favorites is the baked pumpkin pie oatmeal. (http://budgetbytes.blogspot.com/2011/09/baked-pumpkin-pie-oatmeal-277-recipe.html)
I'm not going to put the actual recipe here. I assume you all are smart enough to figure out how to copy and paste the link if you want to know.
This isn't the first time I've made this, but neither I nor my boyfriend John could remember if it was too moist or too dry. I think inadvertently made both kinds in the past. That is kind of the inspiration for this documentation...
The major modifications this time include:
-using dry milk instead of the liquid stuff. I drink a lot of milk (a lot!) but I recently bought a box of dry milk for some homemade granola. I figured I might as well use it up since I don't really want to drink it straight up. I just added the mix, not the water. I'm hoping this will make it creamier without being too moist
-I eyeballed the pumpkin pie spice and vanilla extract. I probably overestimated, but I will tell you it makes my entire apartment smell WONDERFUL (albeit I do live in a studio apartment). I added extra cinnamon too. Delicious plus it adds antioxidants, so that's good.
-Instead of 2.5 cups old fashioned oats, I used about half oats and half homemade granola I had (another recipe for another day). The granola includes rice crispies, dried cranberries, and sliced almonds. I just added the granola/oats until I had the consistency I wanted. I also added more dried cranberries, because, why not?
-I sprinkled cinnamon and brown sugar on top for extra flair.
The timing was pretty true to the recipe. I gave it a few extra minutes at the end to try to crisp it up a lit.
Verdict: Good! The cranberries add a nice kick. The texture is moist and chewy, almost muffin-like. Other than that it's a nice blend of flavors. It could probably use even more cinnamon and maybe some nutmeg (though for most people it's probably perfect)
How to eat: Cold it's a great breakfast to go or pre-workout snack. Also is fantastic warmed with sliced bananas and maple syrup. Add peanut butter to that and I'd be in heaven!
Next time: Play with dried fruit. Or nuts and/or peanut butter. The pumpkin could be substituted with a different flavor for variation. I would like to find a similar recipe but with a more crunchy, granola bar-esque texture
Until next time my foodie friends
-C
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