Crock Pot Apple Pie Oatmeal

I know I'm a bit late, but Happy New Year!  What are your goals for 2012?  One thing I'm trying to do this year is to eat a more nutritious breakfast.  It is so easy to grab a pre-packaged granola bar when leaving for work, but with just a little preparation, you can have individual servings of a healthier breakfast ready quick in the morning.  


This Apple Pie Oatmeal is made in a crock pot and is frozen in 1/2 cup servings.  Stick 1 serving in the refrigerator the night before, and it should be thawed by morning.  What's better is that there is less than 1 teaspoon of sugar per serving, and it is full of flavor from the granny smith apples and cinnamon.  All I do is add 2 tablespoons of low fat milk, microwave, and add a sprinkling of cinnamon and spoonable Truvia and I'm good until lunch.  I'm going to try this recipe again soon using all Truvia and no sugar.  But for now this is a good start!  


Crock Pot Apple Pie Oatmeal adapted from Kalyn's Kitchen
Ingredients:
3 medium Granny Smith apples

¼ cup brown sugar

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp fine sea salt (this is my absolute favorite!)

6 cups water (depending on how thick you like your oatmeal)

3 cup rolled old fashioned oats

milk and spoonable Truvia for serving

Roughly chop apples into ¼ to ½ inch pieces, leaving the skin on. 

Spray the slow cooker lightly with nonstick spray.  Then add apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and water.  Stir together and cook on high for 2 hours.

Add oatmeal and stir ingredients together, then continue to cook on high for an additional 1 to 1 ½ hours, depending on how soft you'd like the finished oatmeal to be.

Allow to cool, and then scoop ½ cup servings into silicone muffin tins.  Freeze, then remove from the muffin tin and store in freezer in a freezer bag. 

To serve, allow to thaw and then microwave with 2 Tablespoons of non fat milk.  Stir until you reach a normal oatmeal consistency.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and Truvia. 

When the oatmeal is done cooking, I scoop 1/2 cup portions into a silicone muffin pan and freeze.  

When frozen, remove the oatmeal pods from their muffin pan and store in zippy bags.

Then, just add a little milk, microwave and stir, and serve with cinnamon and Truvia. Voila!

Club: BAKED - Caramel Apple Monster Cake

On Sunday we celebrated Halloween with the family.  I saw this Monster cake and really wanted to make it, so when I saw we were baking the Caramel Apple Cake with Club Baked, I thought how perfect!  I'd turn the Caramel Apple Cake into this furry little monster.  

I don't have 3 round cake pans, so I made 2 nine-inch cakes, and split each into two - creating a four layer cake.  Also, I cheated with the frosting.  I saw mixed reviews of the frosting recipe on the Club Baked P&Q page, so, being short on time (I made lots of cake balls and puff pastry intestines, too... pictures to come soon), I decided to make a shortcut and just whipped up a batch of my favorite buttercream frosting - adding 1/3 cup of store bought caramel topping for ice cream.  

First we crumb-coated.  Then we (I say WE because the husband did all of the fur piping! I should really say "HE!")  used a grass tip (flat tip with several small holes in it) to pipe the orange fur in concentric rings.  His mouth is black licorice, and his teeth are made of Candy Quik that I piped into triangles on parchment, and then let harden before transferring to the monster.  

His eye balls are devil's food cake pops dipped in vanilla candy quik.  The orange bit is a Candy Melt wafer with black food coloring gel painted on with a paint brush, and a dab of Candy Quik for the little while shine.  We painted the veins on with red food coloring gel and a paintbrush.  It was time consuming, but fun!

As for the cake, everyone who tried it loved it.  My nephew had two bowls full!  What wasn't eaten at family dinner was thoroughly enjoyed at work the next day.  

Thanks for Melissa of Lulu the Baker for selecting this recipe and hosting this week!  What a great pick for this time of year, such a nice Fall spicey cake. Be sure to visit Club Baked and check out how the other Club Baked bakers did with this Caramel Apple Cake.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Recipe Rewind! Caramel Apple Pie Filling

Sorry, I won't be making this week's recipe, the Pavlova Peach Melba for Sweet Melissa Sundays this week. I'm sorry Patty! Though it sounds delicious to me, I'm afraid it just wouldn't go over well in this house. Since I didn't have a chance to participate last week and I really wanted to make the Caramel Apple Pie, I decided to make that instead, but with a twist. I used Spike's idea and made a sort of pastry instead of an entire pie. Thanks for the idea, Spike'!

I also wanted to scale it down, so I used only 2 apples. I prepped the apples as the recipe stated, but added cinnamon to the mix and did a quicky version for the caramel sauce. Instead of making it from scratch, I used store bought caramel sauce. And since I was making it in puff pastry instead of pie form, it would require a lot less baking time, so I had to pre-bake my apple filling. I put the apple slices and caramel sauce in a glass dish, covered it in tin foil. I did 350 degrees for 30 minutes.


As that was baking, I was prepping the puff pastry:

I cut four sheets of puff pastry to about 4.5 inches by 8 inches, and cut slits on either side.

Then, I spooned some of the filling into the center of each sheet:




Then, you close up the pastries. Either lay them on top of each other, or sort of braid them:


Brush them with egg wash and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
After about 25 - 35 minutes in the oven at 350, VOILA:






Very, very good. Delicious warm, fresh from the oven, and I'd say, they're even better the next day warmed in the microwave for a few seconds.

Click here for the SMS post on Double Crusted Caramel Apple Pie, and here to visit Patty's blog, Birding Blossoms and Baking, to see this week's choice, the Pavlova Peach Melba. And be sure to check out the blog roll and see how these treats came out for the other SMS bakers!

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Apple Orchard Crumble

Yes, I'm finally back! I'm really glad I was able to get back in the swing of things for this week's recipe - Um, warm apples coated in cinnamon and sugar topped with brown sugary crumblies, Helloo?? Delicious!

This was a really easy recipe to throw together. The thing that took the longest was coring, peeling and slicing the apples (If only I had one of those little tools, it would have been a lot easier!). The rest came together very very quickly. When I first read through the recipe, I did so quickly, and I thought this would be made in a 10 inch pie plate. So I thought, "Yeahhh, I'll make the whole thing". Then when I had a ginormous bowl full of sugary apple slices, I re-read the recipe and found out it was a 10 inch DEEP DISH.... Ohhhh!!! Since I don't have one of those, I made it in a 9x13 pan, and it fit perfectly.

The only changes I made were to use only Golden Delicious and Mcintosh apples (couldn't find any of the others), and to omit the all-spice and sub in a little more cinnamon in its place. It came out really good! I love those easy, quick ones that taste great! (And it tasted even better with some vanilla bean ice cream and caramel sauce!!!)





Be sure to check out the other fantastic SMS Bakers, I'm sure they did some really beautiful, delicious-looking things! And thanks to Cristine of Cristine Cookies for hosting and posting the recipe!