2 posts tagged “recipes”
Sometimes, I get in the habit of buying convenience foods (like Special K cereal bars or Cliff Mojo PBJ bars) and eating them for breakfast. They're usually quick, easy, nutritionally appropriate, and inoffensive when paired with coffee.
Unfortunately, they're also a waste of paper and other packing/wrapping materials, and they also contain things I don't need to be eating, like preservatives and other multisyllabic items that sound more like something you'd find in a lab than a kitchen.
So, I have started to make my own.
Yeah, it's more work--but it's once a week, and the finished product contains a bit less crap. (Although the environmental impact of the packaging is debatable since all the ingredients come in bottles, boxes, bags and jars. And speaking of packaging, you can also make these with packaged peanut butter cookie mix, to save a bit of time and effort.)
Peanut Butter and Jelly Oatmeal Bars
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup oats (quick cooking is fine) or similar. If you want to add some flax seed, or whatnot, that works, too--just don't go nuts or you'll need to add more liquid.
1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 egg
1 1/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
at least 1/2 cup seedless raspberry jam (or whatever flavor you like best--sugar-free is fine)
For glaze: (which is optional and adds a bit more sugar than I like in a breakfast item)
1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons milk (or orange juice, if you use orange marmalade instead of raspberry jam)
1 tsp raspberry flavoring
OR
1 tsp vanilla extract
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Mix sugars, shortening, peanut butter, and egg. Stir in dry ingredients. Reserve 1 cup of dough. Press the rest of the dough evenly into the bottom of a greased 13x9 pan. Spread jam evenly over the dough, crumble reserved dough, and sprinkle over jam. Bake about 20 minutes. Cool. Drizzle with glaze, if desired. (To make glaze: mix powdered sugar and milk--or orange juice--until smooth and thin enough to drizzle from a spoon.)
Once they're cool, store them in the pan with plastic wrap over it. You can pre-cut them, too, so it's even easier to grab one and go.
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I made this rum cake that theldara linked to the other day, and oh, my god. Fabulous.
The only change I made was to omit the nuts and substitute a slightly lesser amount of chopped dehydrated apricots. You can see them on the top. I still sprinkled the brown sugar on them, too. Also--used dark rum rather than light.
