Caramelized Banana Oatmeal

I'm in love with Oatmeal. When I'm craving bad foods, I crave Chocolate Oatmeal. Which incidentally, last night I really really wanted to substitute my dinner with a large bowl of my Dark Chocolate Mudslide Oats. I'm generally not the kind of person who eats chocolate-based cereals or foods for breakfast - but today, for some reason, it was calling my name (maybe because I deprived myself last night!). This recipe was inspired by a post I saw from The Oatmeal Artist just yesterday - Fifty Toppings to Spruce Up any Porridge! She had a picture of a cup of oatmeal topped with Caramelized banana. While her recipe called for molasses, honey and orange juice, mine relies on the sweetness of the banana itself. 

Caramelized Banana Oats

Prep Time: 10-15 min

Ingredients (Serves 1):

1. 0.5 cup Rolled (Old-Fashioned Oats)
2. 1 cup Unsweetened Non-Dairy Milk
3. 1/2 medium Banana
4. 1 tbsp Flax Seed Meal
5. 0.5 tbsp Natural Creamy Peanut Butter
6. 2 tbsp Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
7. 0.5 tsp Vanilla Extract
8. 1-2 tsp Brown Sugar (for topping, optional)

Directions:

Slice banana in 2 halves lengthwise and crosswise. Place in an ungreased oven safe dish/plate and broil on HI for 5-10 minutes. Keep an eye on the oven as the banana can go from caramelized to burnt really quickly. It will first start to wilt under the heat, and then slowly bubble on top before turning a lovely golden brown. While the banana is in the oven, mix oats, flax seed meal, peanut butter and half the chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl and cook on high for 3-5 minutes. Remove the bowl once in the middle of this time to mix well. Once oats are done, remove carefully from microwave, mix vanilla extract in and transfer to a serving dish. Once bananas are nice and golden, remove the dish from the oven and carefully transfer onto the oatmeal. Top off with a light sprinkle of brown sugar (optional) and remaining chocolate chips! Voila!!! 

Nutrition Facts (Per Serving): Calories 426 (Fat Calories 129)
Total Fat 14.3 g; Carbohydrates 64.7 g; Fiber 11.7 g; Sugars 22.9 g; Protein 11.6 g


If you liked this recipe, be sure to check out my Recipe Index for more Whole-Food, Plant-Based, No-Added-Oil recipes. You can also like Rugrat Chow! on Facebook. Thanks!

Dark Chocolate Mudslide Oats

Last night Tony was craving chocolate. He's been doing so well with being plant-based recently. But he was really craving it bad and was on the brink of running out to the neighborhood gas station and picking up a pint of Rocky Road ice cream. Of course, I couldn't let that happen!! I promised I'd satisfy his chocolate craving, even while using Oats, which he just happens to despise unless they're in Chocolate Chip cookies. I searched the vegan blogs for various recipes and found one which didn't look quite as appetizing as I wanted it to be but I knew I could adapt very easily. 

Dark Chocolate Mudslide Oats

Adapted from: Chocolate Covered Katie - Chocolate Mudslide Oatmeal

Prep Time: 5-7 min

Ingredients (Serves 2):

1. 3/4 cup Rolled (Old-Fashioned Oats)
2. 1.5 tbsp Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa
3. 1 tbsp Flax Seed Meal
4. 1 cup Unsweetened Non-Dairy Milk
5. 2 tbsp Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
6. 1 pinch of Coarse Salt
7. 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
8. 1 tbsp Molasses
9. Maple Syrup (to taste)
10. Dried Coconut Flakes (optional)
11. Sliced/Slivered Almonds (optional)

Directions:

Mix Oats, cocoa, flax seed meal, non-dairy milk (I used almond milk!), salt, molasses in a microwave safe bowl and cook on high for about 3-4 minutes until the mix is no longer runny but nice and creamy. Carefully remove the bowl from the microwave and mix in vanilla extract. Add more sweetener, if needed. I used Maple syrup but you can use whatever you like to use. The molasses do add a lot of color and sweetness so be sure to taste test. Mix well. Serve warm with chocolate chips sprinkled on top. On my bowl, I also sprinkled about a teaspoon of dried coconut flakes and another teaspoon of sliced almonds for some crunch!! Tony had his with only chocolate chips!

Dark Chocolate Mudslide Oats with my fixins :)

My Assessment: This was amazing. I knew Tony would never go for the original recipe. It was way to runny in the original pictures but I knew the flax seed meal would act like a binder (kind of like a flax egg) and result in a creamier texture. I also added more oats (1.5x) than the single serving the original recipe called for to make it even less runny. Overall, cooking the oats until the runniness is gone (4 min for my microwave) resulted in almost a fudgy pudding like texture. LOVED IT!!!

Nutrition Facts (Per Serving): Calories 253 (Fat Calories 68)

Total Fat 7.5 g; Carbohydrates 41.8 g; Fiber 6.8 g; Sugars 14.4 g; Protein 6.5g

If you liked this recipe, be sure to check out my Recipe Index for more Whole-Food, Plant-Based, No-Added-Oil recipes. You can also like Rugrat Chow! on Facebook. Thanks!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Someone posted a recipe on one of the Herbie pages on Facebook this past week that had a picture of the most amazing gooey chocolate chip cookies with it. I wanted to try it .. because of the picture it came with. I'm not sure who to give credit for the recipe, so I'm going to acknowledge the lady who posted in on Facebook - Lori Conner (Thank you!!!).

Can you resist this cookie? I couldn't!!! 

I made slight modifications to the recipe like using a whole 15 oz can of chickpeas instead of just 1 and 1/4 cup as the original asked for and used an extra 1/8 cup of agave to make the dough smoother when it seemed too dry and I baked these cookies for twice as long as the original recipe. 20 min at 350°F.

Mine don't look half as good but tasted great!

Prep Time: 30-40 min

Ingredients (15 Servings):

1. 1 x 15 oz Canned Chick Peas (Rinsed & Patted Dry)
2. 2 tsp vanilla extract
3. 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp Natural Peanut Butter (I used Smucker's)
4. 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup Honey/Agave/Maple Syrup (I used Agave)
5. 1 tsp baking powder
6. A pinch of salt (optional, I didn't use any)
7. 1/2 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine all the ingredients, with the exception of chocolate chips in a food processor until smooth. Make sure that the sides of the processor bowl and scraped down and under all the sides to leave no chunks of chickpeas sitting around. Add chocolate chips, and pulse a couple of times. Using slightly wet hands (an excellent tip!), form small balls with the dough and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. I then used a wet fork to press down each one into a cookie shape, but you could also use your hand to do the same. Bake for about 20 minutes until the outsides begin to brown. The original recipe called for 10 min of baking and I thought they looked too doughy after only 10 minutes so baked them for another 10. I got 15 cookies out of this. Enjoy and keep out of the reach of little children, or they won't last long!! :)

My Assessment: My father-in-law, who WILL NOT eat anything plant-based loved these cookies and I sent almost all of my batch home with him. These were a hit in our household for sure. A big thank you to the creator of this recipe.

Nutrition Facts (Per Cookie): Calories 131 (Fat Calories 57)
Total Fat 6.4 g; Carbohydrates 15.5 g; Fiber 2.4 g; Sugars 2.0 g; Protein 3.9 g


If you liked this recipe, be sure to check out my Recipe Index for more Whole-Food, Plant-Based, No-Added-Oil recipes. You can also like Rugrat Chow! on Facebook. Thanks!

Chocolate Bread Pudding

I made bread pudding this weekend, instead of canning apples which is what I original planned to do. I improved on my previous recipe and made it yummy and gooier than before and used half a loaf of stale bread from the loaf I made earlier in the weekend. It was a loaf of no-knead bread which was awesome when it was fresh and warm out of the oven. However, I need to figure our a better way to store homemade bread because it always dries out. I've tried putting it in a plastic bread box (becomes sweaty and soggy) and I've tried wrapping it in a couple of kitchen towels and leaving it on the counter. Any other suggestions on bread storage would be most welcome. Anyhow, the half loaf that we had left after lunch yesterday was dried and not quite edible this morning. So I decided to transform it into something much more decadent than stale bread. 

Prep Time: 5-10 min + 45 min in the oven.

Ingredients:

1. 3 cups of stale home-made bread pieces, coarsely torn with your hands
2. 4 tbsp Raisins
3. 1/2 cup Non-Dairy Chocolate Chips
4. 1/8 cup Slivered Almonds
5. 1/4 cup Brown Sugar
6. 2 tbsp Chia Seeds
7. 2 tsp Cinnamon
8. 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
9. 2.5 cups Almond Milk (Silk PureAlmond Unsweetened)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly grease a 2.5 qt covered casserole dish. Spread bread all across the bottom in an even layer. Sprinkle raisins, Chia seeds, chocolate chips, brown sugar, almonds and cinnamon across the bread, as evenly as possible. Mix vanilla extract in 2 cups milk and pour it slowly across the entire dish, so as to soak as much of the bread as possible. Cover and bake for 45 minutes. Once done, remove from oven. Uncover, pour the remaining 1/2 cup of almond milk across the pan and re-cover. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to allow the excess milk to get absorbed and for the dish to cook down. At this point all the bread should be soft and gooey and the chocolate should have melted all over the bread. 

If it is not evenly melted, and the bread is still hard, make sure you add more milk and re-bake for 15-20 minutes to get the desired softness. Serve warm. 

My Assessment: Adding the brown sugar instead of maple syrup (my original recipe) makes for a thicker more yummy dish. Also, adding raisins to this dish added a new dimension this time. Even Tony loved it!!! My job is done :)

Antioxidant Smoothie

I've been eating Oats for breakfast for a long long time. Quite a few months actually. So this morning I decided to change it up a little bit. I decided that an antioxidant rich smoothie would be a perfect pick-me-up to start the day on a strong note. And it was ... !!! 

Prep Time: 5 min

Ingredients (Serves 1):

1. 2/3 cup Almond Milk (Chilled)
2. 2/3 Medium Banana, preferably frozen
3. 3 oz Red Raspberries (fresh, half pack)
4. 6-8 Medium Strawberries (fresh)
5. 1/3 cup Blueberries (frozen)
6. 2 tbsp Non-Dairy Chocolate Chips
7. 1/2 tbsp Chia Seeds

Directions:

Blend almond milk, banana, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and chocolate chips together until smooth. Add Chia seeds and mix well. Pour and enjoy!! 

Nutrition Facts (Per Serving): Calories 281 (Fat Calories 9.2)
Total Fat 9.2 g; Carbohydrates 51.7 g; Fiber 10.2 g; Sugars 30.5 g; Protein 5.5 g