simple recipe

Sweet Potato Sunday!

Growing up I was always that kid that absolutely REFUSED to eat my vegetables. I remember sitting at the kitchen table for hours while my mom forced me to have at least one bite of spinach. My parents tried everything! They covered the veggies with sauce or cheese, they tried to spruce them up to make them more interesting to me, but I was a very stubborn child. I was set in my ways and refused to learn to like vegetables. It’s ironic that now as an adult (or a larger child, as I often consider myself) I absolutely LOVE veggies! I try and have a vegetable component in almost every meal, and one of my favorites is the sweet potato!

Sweet potatoes are actually one of my absolute favorite foods of all time. They are second in line behind my ever beloved oatmeal. They include many essential vitamins, including B6, C, D, and A! You basically cover all the important alphabetical vitamins in one serving of this fun vegetable! That’s another thing – they’re a vegetable that tastes like a dessert! What a serious win win.

I buy tons of sweet potatoes every time I go to the store because they can store for a long time. Whenever I don’t feel like cooking a big meal I simply wash a sweet potato, poke a few holes in if with a fork and microwave it for 8 minutes – rotating once at the 4 minute mark. Then I can just cut it open straight from the microwave and load it up with whatever delicious fillings I want! (Chickpeas, cheese, yogurt, honey, cinnamon sugar, nutella, or simply salt/pepper and butter!) However, when I have more time I like to get a little fancier with my sweet potatoes and make myself some sweet oven baked fries! The recipe is easy and the outcome is SO DELICIOUS OH MY GOSH! You’ll just have to try it yourself to believe me! (And this is also a great way to get some vital nutrients into picky kids!)

SWEET SWEET POTATO FRIES

The Ingredients:

1 large sweet potato (or 2 small ones)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon

The Method:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Place sweet potato in microwave for 1-2 minutes so that it’s softer and easier to cut
3. Cut sweet potato into long fry-like strips and place into a bowl (I keep the skins on because I love them, but you can peel your potato if desired)
4. Add the rest of the ingredients of top of the cut potatoes and mix with your hands until each slice is fully covered and the ingredients have all mixed together
5. Spread out the strips onto a sprayed baking sheet
6. Place in oven for 30 minutes
7. Let cool for 5 minutes and then enjoy!

All for myself – Single Serve Microwave Oatmeal Cookie

Hello again everybody! Let me tell you something, I have been busy busy busy since I returned to school. I forgot how easily my life can become so hectic! Between the hours of classes, homework, extracurriculars, work, and attempts at socializing I have found that baking has really been placed on the back burner.

pictured: me prioritizing my social life #SINS

A secondary challenge is that I am surrounded by a bunch of sorority girls who have too much self control and won’t eat my baked goods quickly enough! I ended up eating about 1/2 of the Oreo bars I made and struggled to find other people willing to eat them. People are way too body conscious here and it’s kind of bumming me out. I’m far less motivated to bake when I know that nobody will eat my creations! However, after I got home from work and dinner last night I decided enough was enough! If nobody wanted to eat batches and batches of amazing cookies than I would simply focus on myself. Thus, my single serving oatmeal cookie was produced!

This cookie takes about five minutes total to assemble and bake. You can’t really tell from the pictures but after cooling for about three minutes, the cookie just popped right out of the bowl and I could hold it like a real cookie!! It was so cute and awesome. Actually, just baking it was really cute. I’m used to using cups and cups of flour and sugar for my large scale baking endeavors but this simply required small teaspoons of ingredients! It was adorable and really fun. The end result was surprisingly good. The cookie was a little but chewy, but it still reminded me very much of an Oatmeal cookie. Given that it was cooked in the microwave I was fairly impressed with the outcome. I ended up making two of them for myself (darn my oatmeal cookie addiction!) but they were the perfect night snack and a good way to practice portion control (if you’re into that kind of thing). Another thing I thought of after the fact is that these would be SO much better if some chocolate chips were thrown in them! Next time! (AKA every night ever)

ONE SERVING MICROWAVE OATMEAL COOKIE

The Ingredients:

1/4 cup oats
1 egg white
2 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp baking powder
Cinnamon (as desired)
Chocolate Chips (technically optional but let’s be realistic… they’re never optional)

The Method:

1. Combine all of the ingredients in one (microwave safe) bowl and mix together well until a consistent dough forms
2. Scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl and form into a flat cookie shape on the bottom
3. Microwave on high for 45 seconds
4. Allow to cool for a few minutes
5. Pop the cookie out of the bowl and enjoy!

First week back in the Big Easy – Oreo Marshmallow Bars

Hello friends! Sorry that it has been almost a whole week since I have posted on here but I had to take a several day hiatus from any baking activity in order to move in to my apartment down here in New Orleans. Things have been a little hectic and I lacked the means to bake anything for the first few days down here.

I have since settled in though and I finally found the time to focus on mind on having some fun in the kitchen! I really enjoyed this first baking adventure in my new apartment for several reasons:
1. I didn’t’ have to use the oven, which is nice when the temperature outside never drops below 90 degrees
2. I had to be a little creative when deciding what to make because the ingredients I have available to me were limited to the small convenience store we have on campus

I was walking around the aforementioned convenience store trying to think of what I could make when my eyes landed on the marshmallows, “RICE KRISPY TREATS!” was my first thought and I grabbed the bag of mallows and some butter. Then I went to go get some Rice Krispy cereal and realized that they didn’t have any. I woefully stared at my other cereal options deciding which ones would be a good replacement for RK when my eyes landed on the Oreos next to the cereal on the shelf. I’m a big fan of Oreos. They’re crunchy, sweet, chocolatey, and vegan (who knew?). I picked up a box for myself and as I was standing there with the marshmallows and Oreos in my hand I knew at once that I was going to try a little experiment and combine the two for the ultimate treat. Thus, this magical indulgence was born!

I call them Oreo marshmallow bars because that’s what they are! I can’t think of a name more perfect for them. They’re incredibly easy to make and they take almost no time at all. You get to crush Oreos in a bag too, so they’re a great stress reliever for if you really feel like punching something. I mean, if you’re gonna punch something it might as well be a big bag of Oreos that you get to shove your mouth with later!

A few things to note from my experiment: After they set (and after I ate 3 straight from the pan… woops) I found that they were extremely difficult to remove smoothly from the pan, so maybe I would spray the pan before I put the mixture in. Also, depending on your crunch preference level you could mash the Oreos up a little bit more than I did. Or not, I liked em my way to be perfectly honest.

OREO MARSHMALLOW BARS

The Ingredients:
1 package of Double Stuffed Oreos (it’s like 30 Oreos I think)
1 bag of mini marshmallows (somewhere around 6 cups to be more accurate)
1/2 stick of butter

The Method:
1. Place all of the Oreos in a bag and smash with a rolling pin or other heavy object until they are smushed to tiny bits
2. In a large pot heat the butter and marshmallows and stir until the two have melted together and have reached a smooth consistency
3. Remove the marshmallows from heat and add the crushed oreos
4. Mix and mix and mix!
5. Pour into an 8×8 baking dish and let sit in the fridge for ~15 minutes
6. Cut into 12 sections and enjoy!

Elevated simplicity – Bite Sized Oatmeal “Cookies”

Sometimes in the morning, my standard bowl of oatmeal just doesn’t seem creative enough. When I first heard of the magical 2-ingredient cookies I knew that it would be a fabulous base to transform my morning bowl of oatmeal into something even more spectacular.

The idea is simply mixing oatmeal and a banana together and baking them into “cookies”. (Fair warning: these are not really cookies, so I try not to think of them like that – no cookie should lack it’s necessary butter and sugar, that’s my golden rule) I don’t stop with the oatmeal and banana in this fun recipe, to make my little oatmeal bites I add in what I would to my usual bowl of oats! For this example I added cinnamon and raspberry. You could also add cocoa powder, chocolate chips, raisins (yuck), coconut, nuts, seeds – the combinations are endless! The greatest part about this breakfast is that it feels like you’re eating a plate of cookies for breakfast, but you’re getting all of the amazing nutrients of a regular bowl of oatmeal! I like to eat them accompanied with a glass of almond milk for added nutritional value to round out this cute, simple, and fun breakfast!

OATMEAL BREAKFAST COOKIES

The Ingredients:
1 banana
1/2 cup oats
Optional:
Desired mix-ins! (cinnamon berries, nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, nut butters, etc.)

The Method:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Mush a banana into a bowl and mix in oats until thoroughly combined
3. Fold in any desired mix ins
4. Drop 6 circles of the “dough” onto a greased baking sheet
5. Bake for 14 minutes
6. Enjoy!

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