Super Terrific Morning Oatmeal

This past Sunday I woke up craving oatmeal, but, I didn't want a typical bowl of oatmeal. I went on one of my favorite blogs looking for a recipe because the blogger loves oatmeal so much that she made a tab for it and I ended up finding a baked banana oatmeal recipe. Since I didn't have any bananas I used apples. I altered the recipe below from her blog:

Ingredients: 

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 egg, beat
• 2 apples (Spartan or Pink Lady)
• 1 1/2 cups of almond milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp of cinnamon
• 1 tbsp of butter
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 375*. 
• Place a frying pan over medium heat with butter. While the butter is melting, cut up both apples in 1/2 inch slices. Once the butter melts place the cut up apples into the pan with two tablespoons over water and let it saute for a minute. Then, add the brown sugar. Your pan should be simmering. If not, add more water by tablespoon.
• While the apples are simmering, combine the dry ingredients in a medium size bowl.
• Combine the wet ingredients in a separate medium size bowl. 
• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.
• Line an 8″ pan (square or round) with parchment paper or just use cooking spray.
• Layer the bottom of the baking dish with some apples and liquid from the pan. Then put a layer of the mixed oatmeal, another layer of apples and then a final layer of oatmeal and apples.
• Pop it into oven for about 26 minutes.

http://www.katheats.com/recipage?recipe_id=6000081

I actually ended up forgetting to put the cinnamon in the recipe so I sprinkled some on top.

I also made one more alteration, instead of using brown sugar, I used coconut sugar! You can find it at Costco or any nutrition store. It's a little pricey (at $11) but it is a more natural sugar and a substitute from refined sugar but not a sweetener as it does not have aspartame.  It is considered "more nutritious" because it is a low-carb sugar and it has a low glycemic index. A glycemic index measures how the food that you consume impacts your blood sugar. It also has higher micronutrients then brown sugar or regular sugar because it is less processed. Check out this link for more information and try it out!

http://coconutpalmsugar.com/Home_Page.html

 My breakfast! Here is some of the baked oatmeal with honey greek yogurt and scrambled eggs! With a grande three pump white mocha americano misto from Starbucks; it was a perfect morning.