Oatmeal is one of Cakes' favourite breakfasts .
When we are out for breakfast at a restaurant I tend to order eggs (usually florentine or benedict) and he will order pancakes or porridge. Such is our marriage. I am salty. He is sweet.
Inevitably I will pause in my meal, and look up from my eggs long enough to steal a spoonful or two from his bowl and regret that I didn't order the oatmeal. I do love the way it smells, and I love watching the little wisps of steam rise off the bowl. To me it is the culinary equivalent of a small child snuggling drowsily in mum's housecoated lap early on a saturday morning. Unfortunately, when I'm starving for breakfast I tend to jump at the savoury items, so I usually miss out on the sweet. Not this Saturday though.
It's a good thing that Cakes likes oatmeal so much and that he also adores apples, because when I awoke on Saturday morning I realised there were no traditional (in our house) breakfast fixin's in the house: no eggs, no bread, no spinach, no nothin'...so while Cakes dozed, I pulled things randomly from the cupboard until I had a little pile of ingredients in front of me. This is what I had:
- one apple
- knob of butter
- brown sugar
- white sugar
- vanilla
- cinnamon
- nutmeg
- oatmeal
- milk
- cream
I prepared 1/2 cup (dried) oatmeal according to the directions on the box, but substituted milk for half the water and added 1 Tbsp white sugar and 1tsp vanilla. I made the oatmeal rather thick and stirred through a heaping tablespoonful of cream after it came off the heat.
Meanwhile, I cored and sliced the apple and ffried it over medium high heat in the metled butter. After the aples had been browned on both sides I added to the pan 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and a splash of water. I stirred it gently until the sugar and butter formed a nice caramel. I removed the pand from the heat. I spooned mounds of oatmeal into bowls and topped each with some of the caramel sauce and sauteed apples. Cakes ate two bowls.
I think this would work nicely with peaches or pears as well. I really enjoyed this and vow to make an effort to do sweet breakfasts more often.
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