Tag: oatmeal

Banana Raisin Oatmeal Cookies

Will I never learn? Bags of bananas on sale. I was supposed to buy two bananas. Instead I came home with four pounds of the yellow fruit.

“What am I supposed to do with all those bananas?” asked Jerri.

“I’ll bake some banana oatmeal cookies to help,” I said. “And I could make a banana milk shake.”

“You can also walk to the store and get me a box of vanilla wafers,” she told me.

After Jerri made her banana pudding dessert, I used three bananas to make some really addictive cookies. If you like soft cookies that aren’t too sweet but have a lot of flavor, you should put this recipe in your recipe box.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 cup butter
1 large egg
3 ripe medium bananas
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup plus 2 T all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 cup plus 2 T old fashioned oatmeal
1 cup raisins

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 400º and lightly grease a cookie sheet.

Using a wooden spoon and a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and shortening with the sugar. Beat the egg into the sugar and shortening. Peel and mash three bananas. Beat the bananas and vanilla into the sugar mixture until you have a smooth batter. If there are a few small chunks of banana in the batter, ignore them.

Mix the flour, salt, soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, oatmeal and raisins together in a small bowl and blend the dry ingredients into the banana batter. If necessary, you can add a teaspoon or two of milk or half and half if there is not enough liquid to moisten all the dry ingredients.

Drop by heaping teaspoonfuls about two inches apart on the cookie sheet and bake on a center shelf for ten to twelve minutes until the cookies are lightly browned.

NOTES: Bananas vary in size and moisture content. You should have a stiff batter. You can add a little more flour and oatmeal if the batter seems too thin. This recipe makes about three dozen cookies.

Incidentally, though it certainly wasn’t a conscious decision, maybe I bought that bag of bananas to motivate Jerri to make her banana pudding. It’s just like Mom used to make, and we hadn’t had it in three or four years. I will post her recipe in a week or so.

Easy Oatmeal Pancakes

As I have written elsewhere, we had a lot of pancakes for breakfast when I was growing. up. Most were Mom’s ordinary thin pancakes, but she made other kinds from time to time.

Though I don’t remember them, chances are good that she made oatmeal pancakes once in a while, since she loved trying new recipes and always had a big box of old-fashioned oatmeal in the kitchen. She made oatmeal bread, oatmeal cookies and even oatmeal cakes along with oatmeal toppings for apple and berry crisps.

We had hot oatmeal for breakfast at least a couple times a month. When it was really cold outside (thirty degrees or more below zero) even my dog, Nugget, and Mama Kitty would have oatmeal for breakfast. Mom would make an extra large batch of oatmeal and spoon the steaming leftovers into the two bowls on the back stoop. Dog and cat would dine peacefully side by side on mornings like that.

Considering the nutritional benefits of oatmeal, you might want to add these pancakes to your list of breakfast dishes. They are a bit chewy but delicious. If you serve them with butter and plenty of maple syrup, even the most finicky person at your breakfast table will almost certainly find them more than merely edible.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 T brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 to 2 cups buttermilk
2 T vegetable oil

PROCEDURE:

Preheat a griddle over medium-low heat to about 350º while you make the batter. If the griddle is not non-stick, grease before heating, or use a non-stick vegetable oil spray.

Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly in a large mixing bowl. Beat the eggs in a small bowl until they are lemon colored. Beat one and one-half cups of buttermilk and two tablespoons of oil into the eggs, and gently stir the milk mixture into the dry ingredients.

Mix the batter only enough to make sure that all the dry ingredients have been moistened. If the batter seems too thick, add more buttermilk.

Cook the first side for two to four minutes, until brown, then flip each pancake and cook the other side until brown.

Serve with butter and maple syrup.

NOTES: This recipe makes about twenty four-inch cakes.