Oatmeal Pecan Spice Pancakes

It's always nice to return home. Even after an awesome adventure there's something so comforting about curling up in a couch you're familiar with and with a warm breakfast and a hot cup of tea. For the past few weeks I've been living in Pennsylvania, exploring the east coast and working on an organic farm. It was a wonderful, spending my days working outdoors, cooking with fresh ingredients, and learning more than I ever imagined about planting growing and harvesting produce. I'm slowly compiling the pictures I took there so I'll post more about my trip later.


Anyway, this morning I woke up with the urge to make something special for breakfast and so, after a bit of thought, I decided on oatmeal pancakes. Not just any oatmeal pancakes though, oatmeal pecan spice pancakes...oh yes, they were amazing.

Oatmeal Pecan Spice Pancakes

3/4 cup old fashoined oats
1 1/2 plus 2 tbsp buttermilk
3/4 cup flour (whole wheat or whole wheat pastry is best)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
Generous grate fresh nutmeg
pinch cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
2 tbsp butter, melted
1 tbsp packed brown sugar
1/2 cup pecans toasted and roughly chopped

Soak oats in buttermilk 10 to 20 minutes

Whisk oats soak, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg and salt.

Mix oat/buttermilk mixture, egg, butter, and brown sugar with the dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in pecans.

Heat a griddle over medium heat until hot and lightly brush with oil or butter. Working in batches pour 1/4 cup dollops of batter onto the griddle and cook until the edges solidify, bubbles appear on the surface and the bottoms are golden brown. Flip with a spatula and cook the other side until golden brown. Make sure griddle remains oiled in between batches

Top with maple syrup, butter, or whatever you prefer and enjoy!

Cranberry Orange Almond Spice Bread

It's well into finals week for me here. I am now, finally, past the half way mark...3 down 2 to go. It's amazing how exhausting, and mentally draining, sitting for hours on end can become. Especially when you're running on four to five hours of sleep per night. The only consolation is, at the end of this I get to go home for a nice long break and not think about anything remotely scholarly for over a month.

The biggest problem for me while I'm studying is staying motivated. It's hard to think about the same thing for hours on end without getting distracted. My solution to this problem? I reward myself. Study for x amount of time and then you have y amount of time to do whatever you want. It seems to work...sometimes. Of course then there are the times when I decide that I'm going to reward myself by cooking up something scrumptious. Of course, this means that I have to spend a few hours figuring out what that something scrumptious is going to be. The point of all this is that, my something scrumptious yesterday was this marvelous quickbread.

For some reason, this summer I got the urge to bake with fresh cranberries. I know, weird. The was, however, that no matter how hard I looked, I could not for the life of me find fresh cranberries anywhere (ok, I found one bag of frozen cranberries for fifteen dollars but decided that it wasn't worth it). Apparently I am the only one who wants cranberries in the middle of summer. Since I couldn't make my recipes then, I had no choice but to shelve them until cranberry season arrived.

The recipe for this bread was inspired by the recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray bag of cranberries. Of course I tweaked it around a bit. Rather than simply "Orange-Cranberry bread" I made Orange Cranberry Spice bread. Also, rather than use walnuts (as suggested) I opted for the more distinctive flavor of toasted almonds (so really it's orange-cranberry-almond-spice bread). Finally, in regards to the sugar, I added 3/4 cup directly into the batter while the remaining 1/4 cup I tossed with the diced cranberries and added in at the end. The result was all that is quintessentially fall and the holiday season baked into one amazingly delicious loaf. This bread is so good, it is almost beyond words. It has a sweet, spicy, citrus-y flavor punctuated throughout with the sour bite of cranberries and the earthy crunch of toasted almonds. Tossing the cranberries with the sugar before hand took the edge off of their sourness without masking it completely. The almonds added a certain sweetness that would otherwise be absent and the spices added delicious warmth. My favorite new recipe of the holiday season thus far.


Cranberry Orange Almond Spice Bread

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup raw sugar (divided)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon allspice
generous grate of fresh nutmeg
3/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
2 tablespoons canola oil
1 egg
1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup almonds, toasted and chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray a 9x5 inch loaf pan with cooking spray. Coarsely chop 1 1/2 cup fresh cranberries and toss them with 1/4 cup of the sugar. Allow them to sit while you prepare the rest of the batter. Mix together flour, remaining 3/4 cup sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. Make a well in the center of the flour and add in orange juice, orange peel, oil, and egg. Gradually stir in the flour mixture until well blended. Fold in the cranberries with remaining sugar and almonds Spread the batter evenly into the loaf pan (the batter will be more dough-like, don't worry, it's supposed to be that way).
Bake 45 minutes to an hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from pan, cool completely.

Banana Bread Oatmeal

It seems I am a rare specimen these days. The last of a dying breed. I am a breakfast eater. That's right, I take the time every morning to prepare and enjoy a healthy, hearty, warm breakfast, even if that means getting up at a ridiculously early hour.

Now that's not to say that I put a whole lot of time or effort into my breakfast most mornings. Oh no, most mornings I eat exactly the same thing and I am here to share it with you.

This year I made a new and wonderful food discovery. To preface this, I have never been a huge oatmeal fan. Too gloppy and goopy and (let's face it) snotty. Something consumed out of small instant packets on long backpacking trips and certainly not the way I usually want to start off my day. That was what I thought until I discovered steel cut oats. Oh the wonders! This was not the goobery oatmeal I was used to. Oh no, this was something much more. This had texture, and flavor. I immediately set about trying to find the perfect, healthy way to dress up my new discovery. After many a trial and error (not such a huge fan of plums and oatmeal, or dried cranberries for that matter) I finally hit upon the perfect combination and thus was born banana bread oatmeal. That's right, you get a perfectly healthy scrumptious breakfast AND you get to use up all those overripe bananas that you haven't gotten around to baking with (yes, I know they're on your counter). Anyway, here is my ridiculously simple, one serving bowl of banana bread oatmeal. Enjoy!


Banana Bread Oatmeal (Serves 1)

1/3 cup Steel Cut oats
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup soy milk or any other milk of your choice (alternately you could do just 1 cup water or 1 cup milk, this is just what works for me)
Splash of vanilla extract (optional, or you could try other extracts, coconut perhaps? almond?)
1 large overripe banana
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 - 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1-2 Tbsp toasted walnuts roughly chopped
Extra milk or soy milk for pouring over top

Put oats, water, soy milk, and vanilla in a pot over medium heat. Simmer 20 - 30 minutes. Place almonds in a preheated oven (to about 400) or a toaster oven and toast 5 to 10 minutes. While nuts toast and oatmeal cooks, go shower, put on makeup, pick out clothing, get ready. Once oatmeal is done cooking, break up overripe banana into a bowl and smash with the back of a fork into a pulp. Add cinnamon and nutmeg. Add in cooked oatmeal and stir well to combine. Top with toasted nuts and milk. Enjoy! :)

It goes without saying that this dish lends itself to an infinite number of variations. I've used walnuts instead of almonds, added different spices, mixed in raisins, and even went so far as to mix in pumpkin puree (don't ask, I was in a fall-ish mood, it was surprisingly decent though). Have fun with it!