Five Recipes for National Gingerbread Day!

Happy National Gingerbread Day!

You know what's odd? Celebrating gingerbread in June. I don't know about you, but I associate it with winter and Christmas. This seems like some sort of bizarre conspiracy.

Nevertheless, I was delighted to see that I actually do have several gingerbread recipes to share on this occasion, so without further ado, here are five gingerbread recipes to celebrate this (strangely scheduled) holiday!

Have you tried any of these yet? Which is your favorite?

Apple Beet Oatmeal

One of my favorite parts of meeting new people is how they influence my food preferences. Before I met my former roommate Christin, I never sauteed my vegetables (I always steamed or roasted). Before my current roommate Chilee, I avoided mushrooms at all costs. And of course, there was my former boyfriend from my junior year of college, who inadvertently converted me to a vegetarian (and eventually fully herbie).

Then, there's Allison. She's taught me you can never use enough cinnamon. She showed me (before going vegan) that "runny eggs" are nothing to be feared. She introduced me to dozens of foods I had ever tried before, like goat cheese and Indian food and RAMEN (the real stuff). Last but not least, with months of effort, she trained me to appreciate her favorite vegetable: beets.

I tried them once. I tried them twice. I tried them several times. Each time, I found them tolerable at best, but why did they taste like dirt? Why were they always cold and gelatinous?

But then this recipe happened. I had thought of the concept ages ago, but making it would force me to confront my wariness of beets. I'm pleased to report that I'm so glad I finally did it!

Carrot Ginger Oatmeal

Did you know I used to hate ginger? It's true. If you look at my early recipes when I used ginger, it would always be a teensy tiny pinch. I can't remember when my feelings changed, but I have a much higher tolerance for it now.

I much prefer fresh ginger, but now that I've acquired a taste for it, I'm fine with ground ginger. I thought half a teaspoon would be too much for this recipe, so I started with just a quarter teaspoon. After a few tastes, I continued adding more bit by bit, until I finally had added half a teaspoon total. Perfect.

Spicy Mango Oatmeal

Mango chutney--that's the inspiration for this recipe.

Believe it or not, the first time I had chutney was in Ireland. I remember asking the waitress what "chutney" was because it came on the sandwich I wanted. She tried to explain it, but it sounded like nothing I had ever heard of, so I requested it on the side.

It was life-changing.

Gingerbread White Chocolate Chip Oatmeal

My sister and her husband hooked me up for Christmas. In addition to the fantastic vanilla bean paste they gave me, I also received four bags of nondairy white chocolate chips. Hooray! Time to make those white chocolate recipes I've been dreaming up.

The white chocolate chips add an unexpected sweetness that mellows out the intense gingerbread spices. To keep this porridge healthy, go easy on the chocolate chips. The banana makes the oatmeal sweet and healthy, and a small handful of white chocolate chips will just add a hint of pizzazz.

Sweet Potato Gingerbread Oatmeal

Sweet potatoes are so dreamy. They can be silky and creamy, or fried and crunchy. They can be salty and packed with herbs, or sweet and packed with spices. I do love me some sweet potato oatmeal.

This recipe is quite different from my other gingerbread recipes, mostly because I allowed sweet potatoes to be the star. It seemed pointless to mask the sweet potato flavors completely since I already have gingerbread recipes, so I intentionally elected to make this more of a "gingerbread-spiced sweet potato" recipe (and I'm pleased with the results).

Chai Stewed Apples Oatmeal

I've given up coffee. It was tough for me. Really tough. I've spent the last year sampling soy lattes at every coffee shop in New York City, but the past few months have been trying. Within hours of licking the last bits of froth off my mug, I would always find myself feeling woozy and having cold sweats. Every. Single. Time.

Instead, I've had to reinvest in my love for tea.

I really wish I could order chai more often at all my favorite coffee shops. Sadly, most places make theirs from a concentrate or powdered mix that already includes dairy. Bumsville.

Apple Pie Steel-Cut Oatmeal

My grandma makes a killer apple pie. The apple filling reaches the perfect point between firm slices and mush. I don’t want to have to chew my apples when I’m eating pie, but I don’t want to slurp them like applesauce, either. She nails this balance every time.

The extra special twist is that her apples come from her backyard. An apple tree was planted in her yard each time a new grandkid was born. This means my brother, sister, cousins, and I each have our own apple tree. We take great pride in the apples that grow from them. Each time my grandma makes a pie, someone asks, “Whose apples are these?” There was a stretch of time when my tree was the champion, pumping out dozens of apples throughout the harvesting season. My apple tree is a boss.

I have a soft spot in my heart for apple pie. Well, to be honest, I just really love pie (pie > cake).

I feel like all my pie-themed recipes go through similar transformations where they emerge in every form, from stove-top, to baked, to overnight, to steel-cut. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before you see Pumpkin Pie Oatcakes or Apple Pie Muesli (how would that even work?!).

Apple Pie Steel-Cut Oatmeal

by The Oatmeal Artist

Prep Time: 5 min

Cook Time: 25 min

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Ingredients (serves 4)

• 2 cups milk of choice
• 2 cups water (or more milk)
• 1 cup steel cut oats (I use Country Choice Organic)
• 2 or 3 apples
• 1 tbsp flax meal or seeds (optional)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp apple pie spice (or 2 tsp cinnamon with two pinches each of nutmeg, allspice, and ginger)
• 1/2 tsp molasses (I use Blackstrap)
• 1/8 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Add milk and water to a large pot over medium heat.
2. While you wait, prepare your apples. Dice them into as small of pieces as possible (the smaller the chunks, the more evenly distributed the flavor will be!).
3. Once the liquid comes to a boil, add oats, diced apple, and flax. Reduce heat to medium.
4. Stir occasionally. After about ten or fifteen minutes, add vanilla extract, apple pie spice, molasses, and salt. Stir.
5. When you're pleased with the consistency of the oatmeal, transfer to four or five serving bowls. Add a splash of your milk of choice and any other additional toppings (pecans and maple syrup are wonderful).

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**You can also find hundreds of other oatmeal recipes (as well as tons of other meatless recipes) on my Pinterest account!  You can also like The Oatmeal Artist on Facebook. Thanks!

Pumpkin, Apple, and Cranberry Oatmeal

Pumpkin. How can I make more pumpkin recipes? What else can be done with pumpkin? These are the questions I ask myself twice a day.

What spices and herbs go well with pumpkin? What fruits pair well with pumpkin? What different forms of oatmeal have I not tried with pumpkin?!

The result of this never-ending search is today's recipe. Seeing how well apples paired with sweet potatoes, I knew they'd be smashing with pumpkin. Of course, cranberries are my go-to dried fruit for autumn recipes, so I threw those in as well. Aaaand bam, cue the world's coziest breakfast.

Pumpkin Pie Steel-Cut Oatmeal

For over a year, I had to stomach the fact that my Salted Brownie Baked Oatmeal was my #1 most viewed recipe. I mean, that recipe was fine and dandy, but number one?? C'mon. Not even close. I could name thirty recipes that I'd pick over that one.

Luckily for me, the most wonderful thing happened about a month ago. As always, August and September ushered in the yearly pumpkin craze, and my Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal received a great deal of love on Pinterest. Out of nowhere, this recipe vaulted into the #1 spot and surpassed the Salted Brownie by thousands of views. COOL. I feel like my Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal is a much better representative of my blog than the Salted Brownie.

I love my pumpkin pie recipes. Certainly, they're not my MOST favorite, but they're in my Top Ten. You might think that I'd be satisfied with a stove-top, baked, and overnight version, but no, I'm not finished. Now that I've fallen in love with steel-cut oats, it just made sense to add another variation to my pumpkin pie family.

Gingerbread Steel-Cut Oatmeal

I've made Gingerbread Oatmeal before. You might remember it. It was one of my trials. One of my struggles. One of my white flags.

I gave up and just borrowed a recipe from Vegan Yack Attack.

This recipe is mine. Well, I can't take all the credit, of course. VYA's recipe did influence me a lot. However, I made sure to include some bananas in my version because I'm stubborn like that. I'm grateful I did because this was one spicy [insert colorful language here]. The banana helped mellow out all those cloves.

Coconut, Honey, and Fig Oatmeal

Last Monday marked my first day of school at NYC. Thanks to my lovely 40-minute commute, this entails me waking up at 4:45 for the next ten months. Thankfully, I love my job. I feel like you have to love your job in order to drag yourself from underneath your electric blanket at 4:45 (yeah, I sleep with an electric blanket in August; don’t judge me!).

Luckily for me and my exhausted self, I’ve enjoyed some fantastic porridges every morning. Feeling particularly ambitious on Monday afternoon, I whipped up FOUR different oatmeal recipes. Yeah. Four. My roommates kept filtering in and out of the apartment, shooting me odd looks as I ran around the kitchen, pulling out seemingly unrelated ingredients and dirtying every bowl and spoon and fork in the cupboards.

Peach Melba Oatmeal

It's June 9th. That means we have 2.5 weeks of school left. In 2.5 weeks, I'll be bidding farewell to students who I likely will never see again. I'll be embracing the three kids I've tutored daily for over nine months. Let's be honest:  I'll probably cry.

But on the other hand, I'm very eager for summer vacation. Like most inhabitants of this world, I look forward to the summer season and all it represents. Certainly, summer is not my favorite season (I prefer autumn, especially here on the east coast!), but how can one not love summer? Vacations, sundresses, lazy Saturdays in Central Park, cookouts, afternoons at the pool or the beach....and summer produce.

Oh mercy, I do love summer produce...the watermelon, berries, and peaches. It's a little early for true peach season right now, but they've started popping up at Trader Joe's. When I saw they were selling small crates of them for $3.49, I couldn't resist.

Spiced Plum Overnight Oatmeal

My pear obsession has officially moved on to a plum obsession. Plums are great. They're smaller than pears and apples, which makes them perfect for snacking. I despise when I eat an apple for a mid-morning snack and it stuffs me so much that I can't enjoy my lunch! Switching to the humble plum has cured this dilemma.

In oatmeal, plums taste quite similar to apples. However, plums don't brown like apples do, so they are much better suited for overnight recipes! To continue the resemblance to apples, I used classic apple pie spices to complement the plums. As you can see from the picture, I topped the final product with granola!

Grapefruit Overnight Oatmeal

I'm still disappointed that my Grapefruit Oatmeal recipe isn't more popular. How many glittering reviews do I have to give it before people try it out? What I love about it most is that the oatmeal and coconut milk mellow out the bite of the grapefruit, leaving you with just the sweet, citrusy flavor of the grapefruit. No bitterness! The only thing I don't like about it is the prep work; segmenting grapefruits is such a bother.

Well, here's a way to save some time. You can do the prep work the night before, and you'll be able to wake up to delicious grapefruit oatmeal in the morning without dirtying a knife!

Apricot Granola Oatmeal

Prepare yourself for a whole lot of dried fruit craziness coming your way. Remember the box of goodies my mom sent me before my birthday? Well, she apparently decided that wasn't enough, and she shipped an even BIGGER box of treats last week. I guess the first box was my "pre-birthday gift," and the second one was the "belated birthday gift." Either way, THANK YOU, MOM!!!

The second box contains oodles of awesome stuff, from papaya to crystallized ginger. I can't tell you how excited I am to use them all in oatmeal!

For my first recipe, I was feeling a little uncreative, so no papaya spears made it into the saucepan. I did, however, use the maple-almond granola my mom sent as a topping! Granola makes a wonderful topping; I also used it on the Loaded PB&J Oatmeal! Some days, you just can't decide between cold granola and hot porridge, so you have both! :)

Gingerbread Oat Muffins

I never used to enjoy baking things (even baked oatmeal took me awhile to get the hang of), but I am on a muffin spree lately. Once I learned my ways with baking soda and wet to dry ratios, making oatmeal muffins became a blast.

These were originally intended to be banana-gingerbread muffins. However, after preparing the batter, I realized the banana flavor was completely hidden. To be honest, I wasn't at all upset about that! I actually preferred a straight-up gingerbread flavor, but I knew (or thought) using bananas as a sweetener would change the flavor, so I decided to be realistic and honest and include banana in the name.

Berry-Ginger Sauce

To be honest, I'd be happy eating "boring" oatmeal forever. A simple peanut butter and banana oatmeal makes me absolutely giddy. However, because I own an oatmeal blog where people come to see new and creative ideas, I have to get fancy sometimes. For those of you who like getting fancy, this one's for you.

Toppings make things special. Just throwing chocolate chips on my oatmeal gets me all excited, so imagine how I felt drizzling on spoonfuls of BRIGHT RED DELICIOUSNESS.

Sweet Potato Oatmeal Muffins

What do you do when a hurricane pummels your town and cancels school for four days? Bake. Bake all afternoon. Bake multiple batches of muffins and have your roommates taste-test for you.

Here's the result for you! These muffins are perfect for a healthy breakfast. They're sweet enough to be delicious and satisfying, but not overly sweet like traditional muffins. They are also free of refined sugars and flours. You're welcome!

Gingerbread Latte Oatmeal

Who says gingerbread lattes are only for wintertime?

It hit me like a jar of coconut oil--latte oatmeals! Coffee oatmeals! Mocha oatmeals! This recipe for gingerbread latte oatmeal is actually just ONE of DOZENS of ideas I have using coffee as the liquid base. I am so excited to share with you all my ideas! I seriously cannot post fast enough.