Easter-birthday cake!!!

Today is Easter Sunday, and it is also my birthday. This happens once in a while, and my Easter-birthdays have been my some of my favorite ones.  I actually never really care much about Easter, unless it happens to fall on my birthday. Today was also Seraphine's first Easter, so that made it extra special.

For my birthday this year, I made a sugar free carob-banana oatmeal cake. The cake actually tasted great. I tried to make some sugar-free icing to go with it, but it came out really horrible.

Here's the recipe for the cake though:

2 ripe bananas
3 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 stick of butter
1 cup sweet whey powder
1 cup oat flour
1/2 cup carob powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a bunt pan.

In a mixing bowl combine eggs, butter, bananas, whey powder, buttermilk, and vanilla. Beat thoroughly for 10 minutes. In a separate bowl combine the dry ingredients. Fold in the dry ingredients, bake in a bunt for about 40 minutes.

Beautiful red cabbage

Yesterday I used half a red cabbage to make blue and purple dye for our Easter eggs. The other half of the cabbage became coleslaw. I used greek yogurt, mustard, and Italian dressing instead of mayonnaise. It sat overnight in the fridge and turned a beautiful magenta-purple color. So for today's oatmeal, I just made plain oatmeal and topped it with red cabbage coleslaw and a scoop of Greek yogurt. This was a colorful and flavorful dish to start my day.

I burned today's oatmeal.

Sorry world, I burned the oatmeal. I guess I got distracted, and forgot to turn the pan down to low after it started boiling.

I was going to use some homemade vegetable dye to color my oatmeal fun colors today, but since its ruined, I guess I'll just have to put up pictures of died eggs instead.

3/28/2013. Poached

Today I tried out poaching eggs in the same pot as the oatmeal, rather than poaching them separately. It worked, though the yolks were firmer than I liked. I basically waited till the oatmeal was almost done, then cracked two eggs right on top of the oatmeal, covered it and let them simmer for a couple minutes. Next time I will really watch the clock so my yolks stay runny.

Spring is in the air...

I opened up a bag of steel cut oatmeal today that was sitting in a forgotten corner of the pantry. I then noticed that the expiration date had passed. The oats were probably still fine, but I decided to search for an alternative use for them.

A few google searches later I learned that oat groats and steel cut oats are often used in bird seed mix. So I dumped the expired-but-probably-fine oatmeal into the bird feeder.

Within a few minutes of filling the feeder some sparrows and juncos arrived. I tried to get a picture of the birds eating the oats, but I don't have a zoom lens. Oh well.

Raisin and walnut baked oatmeal

I had some leftover cooked oatmeal from a couple days ago. I decided to mix it up with an egg, some whole wheat matzah meal, raisins, walnuts, and almond meal. Then baked it in ramekins at 350 for 45 minutes. The result is a rich and moist baked oatmeal with nice chewy bites of nuts and sweet raisins. Delicious.

Oat matzah-ish

As I discussed yesterday, oats are unlikely one of the five grains that can be chametz or be made into matzah. But for fun today I made some matzah-like oat crackers. It's a simple recipe, but you need to work quickly to get them cooked in under 18 minutes (like matzah).

1 cup steel cut oats, ground in a coffee grinder into flour.
1/4 cup water
1 pinch of kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 425. Place a pizza stone or cast iron pan in the oven to heat up.

Sprinkle some of the oat flour on the counter top. Mix the water a little at a time into the oat flour until its a thick doughy consistency. Roll out to 1/8 inch thick and cut into large squares. Prick all over with a fork. Place on the pan or stone to cook in the oven. Makes 2 or 3 large square matzos.