Oat Bran Pancakes

19.12.2016

I’ve been making these for about a year now. It’s a pretty adaptable recipe – you can use whatever kind of milk, flour or sugar you like. If I were a fancy food blogger, I’d say the oat bran gives them a complex, hearty flavor that goes perfectly with delicately scalloped, hand-dyed Shetland wool hand warmers wrapped around a freshly poured cup of locally roasted fair trade coffee rim-lit by the warm rays of winter sun streaming across a rustic wood kitchen table. Or something like that.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup oat bran
• 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 tablespoon oil
• 1 cup light coconut milk

Preparation

1. Mix dry ingredients in a bowl with a whisk. Add wet ingredients and whisk together. Heat a sauté pan over medium heat. You can oil the pan but it’s not necessary.
2. Using a tablespoon for measure, drop a tablespoon of batter onto the pan for a roughly 3″ diameter pancake. Cook until the edges start to curl away from the pan (see image below) and bubbles start to come through the surface.
3. Flip and cook on the second side for about a minute. Makes about 21-24 3″ diameter pancakes. Everyone in our house eats them with different toppings: my daughter likes butter or chocolate spread and sometimes whipped cream; my husband eats them with butter and maple syrup and I like them with peanut or almond butter and maple syrup or marmalade.

Apples!

14.10.2016

It is finally fall here in southeastern Michigan and fall means lots of harvest activities and lots of harvest activities means apples. Apples are my favorite fruit – I like ’em whole, sliced, chopped, stewed, in a pie, reduced into applesauce or apple butter. This year, I have big plans for our apples and so we came home with a couple of bushels.

I turned one of the bushels into five pints of apple ginger chutney and three 16oz of apple sauce. I found both recipes on Epicurious and modified them slightly for my own tastes. My versions and notes below:

Apple Ginger Chutney*

Ingredients

• 4 large hard, tart apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
• 2 cups minced onion
• 3/4 cups lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 cup golden raisins
• 1/4 cup minced peeled fresh gingerroot
• 1 red bell pepper, minced
• 3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoons dried hot red pepper flakes

Preparation

1. Chop the apples into pieces about the size of dice. Mince the ginger and bell pepper.
2. Add all the ingredients into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until thickened. In my case, this was about 40 minutes.
3. According to the original recipe, it will keep in the refrigerator for two weeks. I canned it in pint jars, processing it in boiling water for about five minutes after sterilizing the jars, lids and rings.

Roasted & Spiced Apple Butter

Ingredients

• 8 large** hard, tart apples
• 2 tsps of cinnamon
• 1 tsp of nutmeg
• 1 tsp of ground cloves
• 2 tbsp of butter

Preparation

Peel, core and chop the apples. Put them in a baking pan and roast for about 30 minutes until tender.

Remove from the oven and let cool briefly. Then move apples into a bowl and mix in butter and spices. Once mixed, puree in a deep bowl with an immersion blender or in a food processor. I filled roughly one 16oz mason jar (leaving about 1/4″ of headspace) with the puree and processed it for five minutes in boiling water.

*Based on this recipe
**About the size of a baseball