Oatmeal

I remember the first time I had oatmeal. It was over 10 years ago when I had hired a trainer and he gave me a meal plan to go with my training and oatmeal was the first thing I had to eat in the morning. My first attempt was anything but delicious. One-minute oats mixed with hot water with a pinch of salt. Well, I was a good sport and I stuck with it for a while and you know what? I eventually got used to the texture and the taste but I still wouldn’t say that I liked it one bit. After 2 months though I’d had enough of the bland stuff and went back to eating the way I did before the meal plan. I wanted flavour. I wanted texture. I wanted variety. I wanted yummy stuff.

A few years later I started eating oatmeal again. Once again, one-minute oats mixed with hot water (no salt). I just ate it out of the comfort of not having to think about what to have for breakfast. What could be easier? All I had to do was scoop 1/3 C of oats with hot water from the water cooler and let it sit until the water was absorbed. I enjoyed them much more than I did way back then. But then I stopped eating it when I got married and had kids. With the lack of sleep and time, eating breakfast was the last thing on my mind and I would eat mindlessly all day long.

Last year I ventured into blog reading and I came across Kath Eats. She loves oats so much so that she even did a tribute. I never knew that oatmeal could be jazzed up except for when you purchase them in boxes of instant packets of flavoured oatmeal which I never liked. So I’ve tried her banana oatmeal and I use it as a basis for oatmeal. Here’s my favourite combo:

1/3 C large flake oats
1/3 C water
1/3 C milk
1/2 ripe banana

topped with:
1 Tbsp dried cranberries
1 Tbsp semi-sweet chocolate chips (blooming from being in the pantry too long)
1 spoonful natural almond butter

This bowl is so satiating. I find that if I have a bowl of oats for breakfast my sugar cravings are controllable for the rest of the day, which is a good thing, especially when there are still Halloween candies laying around.

The Beater Blade +

Now here’s a brilliant gadget:  the Beater Blade + (KA-TH) shown here is a paddle attachment made for tilt-head Kitchenaid stand mixers. If you don’t have this mixer, don’t despair as they carry different paddle models for different stand mixers. What is so special about this plastic paddle as opposed to the Kitchenaid solid-built paddle? Well the external sides of the paddle are actually flexible and are meant to act as a spatula so that there is no need to scrape the sides of the bowl when mixing. It also has an extra center prong that ensures that the mixture will have an even consistency. It’s great for making buttercream, icing, cake batters, and best of all, my favorite cheesecake! Here is the Mascarpone Cheesecake being made with the new beater.

    

I just can’t believe that something so delicious and smooth was so easy and quick with this gadget. So if you use your stand mixer frequently, I definitely recommend the BeaterBlade+.

Wolverine Birthday Cupcakes

My eldest son is in Senior Kindergarten and had requested Wolverine cupcakes to take to school for his birthday. I could not imagine how I was going to make them. I spent a couple of weeks pondering how I would decorate them and each time I wanted an easy way out. The easiest thing to do was to purchase toppers for the cupcakes but I couldn’t find any at Michael’s, Party Packagers, Bulk Barn, or even Wal-Mart. They had Spiderman, Diego, Dora, Superman, Thomas the Tank Engine…Oh why?!? I even tried to convince my soon-to-be 5 year old to choose Spiderman (he loves him a whole lot!), but nope! He was set on Wolverine. Anyhow, here are his Wolverine cupcakes (don’t laugh). I know that I made some mistakes (nose should have been done in yellow) and it doesn’t resemble Wolverine much but remember 5-year olds have great imaginations and if you tell them it’s Wolverine then it’s Wolverine they see. I made 21 of them, well the birthday boy put the grin on the Wolverines. So, here they are!

Ha-ha! I just noticed I missed piping the nose on one of them. I don’t think any of the children noticed.

By the way, the teacher gave me great feedback. They were a hit!

The recipes I used are:

Golden Vanilla Cupcakes (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)
Vanilla Frosting (from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes)
I used Sour Big Foots to make Wolverine’s eye mask

Homemade Mascarpone Cheese

Mascarpone cheese is hard to come by and even when it is available, it is very pricey. I found on the web that it was possible to make my own. I Googled “make mascarpone cheese” and found many sites for the recipe, unfortunately I don’t remember what site I got the recipe from. The recipe seems very simple (but simple does not mean easy – more on that in a moment).

Homemade Mascarpone Cheese

1 pint (500 mL) whipping cream (35% m.f.)
1 Tbsp lime or lemon juice (I used lime)

First things first, I doubled this recipe which I do not recommend.

Set a double boiler up so that the bottom of a medium metal bowl sits slightly in the simmering water. Pour the whipping cream in. Whisk or stir occasionally until the cream reaches 180 degrees F. This took forever (45 minutes to be exact). Actually, my cream never reached 180. The closest I got was 165 degrees. I figured this isn’t right (it shouldn’t take this long) so I just whisked in the lime juice and hoped that it would work. I whisked lightly and frequently for another 10 minutes over the water bath and it didn’t look like it had thickened the cream, although the cream had reduced a little from the 50 minutes it’d been heating up. I thought that it was a failure. I took the bowl off the double boiler and let it cool to room temperature (though I think the site I went to said to cool slightly) before covering it with plastic wrap and putting it into the refrigerator overnight. Because I was certain that it wasn’t going to work I left it in the fridge for two nights before taking a look at it. To my surprise it had set!!!! I proceeded to take the bowl out of the fridge and scooped the “cheese” into a fine sieve lined with a coffee filter set over a bowl to allow any excess liquid to be removed from the cheese. I covered it with plastic wrap again and placed it back in the refrigerator overnight yet again. The next day I took a look and it really did look like Mascarpone cheese. I took a taste and mmm…it was very good. I was so happy because I had made 20 ounces of Mascarpone cheese and it had only cost me $2.75 in ingredients.

Next time when I make Mascarpone cheese, and I will make it again, I will stick to the original recipe of 500 mL whipping cream and 1 Tbsp lime/lemon juice because I think this is the reason I wasn’t able heat the cream to 180 degrees F. Or I might follow another recipe that uses tartaric acid in place of the lime/lemon juice. I wonder if tartaric acid is easy to find…

Super Hearty Oat Cookies

These cookies are so delicious and hearty. And they make a lot. This is a great recipe if you’re serving a large number of people.

Super Hearty Oat Cookies (makes 50 cookies)
~ adapted from The Eat-Clean Diet

1 – lb tub + 2/3 C margarine, non-hydrogenated
2 C brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
3 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 – 1/2 tsp salt
5 C large flake oats *
3 C quick oats *
4 C all-purpose flour, unbleached
1 C semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 C dried cranberries

* if only using one type of oats, just measure out 8 C oats in total.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets.

2. Cream margarine and brown sugar.

3. Add eggs and beat.

4. Beat in honey, vanilla and salt.

5. Using a strong wooden spoon or spatula, stir in oats and flour.

6. When almost fully combined, add chocolate chips and cranberries and combine well (may need to use hands but work quickly so that the chocolate doesn’t melt onto hands).

7. Roll cookie dough into balls (around 40-50 balls). If baking them right away, place on prepared baking sheets and press down to flatten. Bake each sheet for 15 minutes or until desired brownness. If freezing, flatten balls  and freeze separated for an hour, then throw into a plastic baggie. When baking frozen cookies, just put onto a prepared baking sheet and put into preheated 350 degree F oven for 15 minutes, but will most likely need a longer baking time. Check for desired doneness.