Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal

I'm staring at the Blogger toolbar right now, looking for a button that will allow me to attach a 'smell' to this post. Unfortunately, I don't see one. Quotes, links, pictures, videos, but no smells? That's really doing you all a great disservice since I don't have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the smell of my breakfast this morning.

I had this brilliant idea last night that I would try making oats on the stovetop, I mean, it is Sunday morning, so I thought my breakfast deserved a bit more effort than my usual microwave quick oats I make while still half-asleep on weekdays.

We're in the midst of final exams right now so I planned to wake up at 7:30, do my ab workout, have breakfast, all by 8am. This way, I could get to library and finish up studying for my anatomy exam tomorrow and still have time for baking and my Hot Yoga class . But unfortunately my overly-optimistic self forgot that I don't actually know how to make old-fashioned oats on the stove, so by 8 I was still wondering how often I needed to pause my workout to stir the pot.

This is the part where I would have attached the 'smell' to this post because it is absolutely intoxicating. So please do pretend that I did and breathe in deeply. Doesn't that smell amazing? I know.

Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal
Adapted from Stovetop Oatmeal with Whipped Banana
Yield: 1 serving

• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats
• 1 cup water
• pinch salt (don't forget this)
• 1/2 a banana, sort of mashed
• 1/4 cup milk or extra water
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons roasted chopped walnuts (roasted nuts are about 100 times more delicious than raw, see instructions here)

1. On low heat, mix the oats, salt and 1 cup water. Cook for 4-5minutes
2. Add the banana and cook for 1-2 minutes longer
3. Stir in the extra milk/water, use more or less depending on how thick you like your oatmeal
4. Top with peanut butter and nuts.

Had to take out the rubber spatula, it was that good.

Peanut Butter Banana Stack

Go faster! Because faster is harder, and harder is more fun!. . .now smile.

This is what my spin class instructor was screaming at us at about 8:30 this morning, and after a few times, I was starting to believe it. It's amazing what a dedicated and fun fitness instructor can get you to do, even if it's a Saturday morning. I really have no idea what I'm going to do this summer away from the incredible Rec Centre we have here at school.

I got too excited and inhaled half of it before snapping a picture, I'm sorry.

I wonder sometimes what my life would be like if I had a peanut allergy. I think I would actually starve. The grocery store at school was recently giving out free samples of a soy-based spread meant to replace peanut butter. The store staff were all saying how it taste just like the real thing, so I was really excited to try it once I got home. My excitement was quickly quenched once I tried it, it tasted like soy, in a bad way. Yuck. I am incredibly thankful that my immune system will tolerate the real thing, because that means that I get to enjoy this!


The pancakes are from my favorite pancake recipe and the same ones I used in my Strawberry Shortcake Stacked Pancakes. They have no oil, eggs, or butter but taste like they're full of it, yum. They also freeze well, not that you'll have any left.


Peanut Butter Banana Stack
Adapted from Strawberry Shortcake Stacked Pancakes
Yield: 8-10 pancakes (I got 9 + a baby one)

• 1 cup + 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut (plus a little more for garnish)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (didn't have any)
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice (didn't have any)
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• Pinch salt
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 cup warm water

• Plenty of peanut butter
• 1/2 banana per stack

1. Combine all dry ingredients, and all wet. Whisk the two together.
2. Scoop 1/4 cup of batter onto a heated and greased pan, flip when the edges are set.
3. Layer pancakes with peanut butter and banana slices
4. Sprinkle with extra coconut

Strawberry Shortcake Stacked Pancakes

My two favourite meals of the day are breakfast and dessert. I'm often tempted to eat pancakes for dinner and always scoping out the dessert menu while the waitress is asking whether I'd like an appetizer. I'm sure that's only half bad, after all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

My blackberry has been acting up lately and has failed to wake me up 3 out the 4 last mornings. Frustratingly, this means that I missed out on my 8:30 90 minute spin class this morning. And no, I'm not insane for waking up that early on Saturdays to work out. Ok maybe slightly insane, but the resultant endorphin rush and charming middle-aged couple that teach it do help.

Putting that behind me, I decided to whip up these Strawberry Shortcake Stacked Pancakes from ohsheglows. That's right, strawberry shortcake for breakfast! Like I said in a previous post, Angela at ohsheglows is a genius that can make healthy food even more appealing than junk. Did I mention it's all vegan too? Genius indeed.

These were quite a bit of work but were well worth it. The 'soft serve' topping reminds me of summer, regardless of the fact that it's -8C outside right now. I'll definitely be making it by the bowl in the next few months.

The pancakes themselves were also delicious. I loved the addition of shredded coconut and they tasted surprisingly buttery even without the use of any butter, oil, or eggs. I'm still in amazement.

Luckily I did snap a few pictures before I went straight for it.

Already half way there, the party's almost over.

Did anyone catch on to the P90X Ab Ripper X reference there? No? Ok..then.

And then it was all over :(

Strawberry Shortcake Pancakes

Yield: 8 pancakes (I ended up with 9.5)

Recipe here

Note: I didn't have any nutmeg, allspice, maple syrup or coconut milk so I omitted the first two and used cow's milk and honey instead. 

Per 4-ish pancakes (with strawberries and topping):

575 calories | 31g sugar | 21.45g fat | 17g protein (whoa!)

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie

Week 2 of half-marathon training is going just swimmingly. I did some speed work today so that I'll be able to finish in my goal time of 2 hours. The plan was to do a short warm up and then eight repetitions of 0.25mi. at 6.0mi/hr and 7.5mi/hr which seemed really daunting. If you add up the 8 repetitions alone without the warm-up that's already 4 miles, but I guess I was working off of some runner's high because I breezed right through it!

I usually go to a 60 minute Hot Yoga class Sunday evenings to sweat away anything stressful I encountered throughout the week. It's a great way to start fresh and be ready to dare Monday to give you its best shot. If you haven't tried hot yoga before, you must; the first time I went it was, sort of, life altering. It's like I had never felt so peaceful in my life before, really. But my schedule is doing funny things again so I went tonight instead.

The problem with that is that it means that I'm burning through a lot of calories today and need some way to replenish them. That would be easy except I coincidentally had a protein-full omelette for breakfast and wasn't all that hungry today so I needed another way to refuel. At least I know a delicious ingredient that will do the trick, peanut butter of course!

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie
Yield: 1 ~16oz. smoothie

• 1 frozen banana, peeled and broken into smaller pieces
• 3/4 cup 'milk' of your choice (I like soy)
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1 tablespoon ground flax seed (optional but it adds some nice texture and is full of omega-3's and fibre)
• water to adjust consistency

1. Blend until smooth and add water as needed

378 calories | 21g sugar | 18g fat (mostly healthy fats!) | 14g protein

Banana 'sorbet'

This is probably the simplest and most guiltless dessert you can make. In fact, it's good for you. Plus, bananas are high in potassium so this is a delicious way to refuel all those electrolytes and carbs you just burned off. Yum. . . I expect gatorade will be going out of business soon?

Find the recipe here.

Chocolate Banana Smoothie

This post is a little late but I've been debating for a while now whether I want to include too many posts here that are not related to baking since this is supposed to be a baking blog. The thing is, smoothies are sort of their own food group in my diet and I'm always on the prowl for new recipes so I've decided that I'm going to use this blog to share them too. My smoothie recipes are usually inspired by a smoothie I've tried from an actual smoothie shop or a dessert.  On my way back home for the holidays, I had a brief layover in Toronto Pearson airport and was on the search for a small meal amid the plethora of over-priced junk food that was available. Without much success in the realm of solid foods, I decided to try a Chocolate Vivanno Smoothie from Starbucks. And then I got addicted . . .

I remember when Starbucks started selling smoothies a few years ago and had read a couple reviews saying that they tasted too banana-ey since an entire banana is added to the 16oz drink. That's not a problem for me because the concept of 'too much banana' is foreign to me. I actually have to deliberately buy overripe bananas to bake with as they never stick around long enough to reach the prime baking level of ripeness at my place.  I've watched very intently as the baristas make this and my recipe does have some differences. They make the Vivanno with a room temperature banana and just add plenty of ice while my recipe includes a frozen banana. Also as I will likely never have access to their top secret mocha syrup, I've replaced it with cocoa. It took me a couple tries to get this smoothie right, but here it is!

Chocolate Banana Smoothie

Yield: 1 ~16oz smoothie

• 1 ripe banana (sliced and frozen)
• 3/4 cup soy milk
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1. Blend and enjoy!

Per smoothie:

223 calories | 19g sugar | 4g fat

Walnut Banana Muffins

I’m a big believer in signs and hunches. So when my constant cravings of delicious-but-oh-so-unhealthy banana nut muffins from Tim Hortons miraculously coincide with a sale on bananas at my local grocery store, I take that as a sign that I need to bake myself some banana muffins before my junk food temptations get the best of me. And I hate to say this, Tim Horton, but I may have just ousted you in the contest of making the best banana muffins. Really, Tim, are your muffins heavenly moist and delicious, not really. Do they contain actual bananas? Unlikely. Are they filled to the brim with fat and calories? Most certainly. Which brings me to my night’s accomplishment: Walnut Banana muffins worthy of a patent for a fraction of the caloric evil… Take that, Mr. Horton.




Walnut Banana Muffins

Yield: 1 dozen

• 3 to 4 ripe bananas 
• 1/3 cup melted butter 
• 1/2 cup sugar 
• 1 egg 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla 
• 1 teaspoon baking soda 
• Pinch of salt 
• 1 cup of all-purpose flour 
• 1/2 cup rolled oats 
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts 

Christmas Morning Banana Muffins

Sometimes you have to trust your instincts. In this case, when something doesn’t look like muffin batter, it probably isn’t muffin batter. We had had some extra sour cream leftover from chilli night and I had this old recipe sitting around on my computer (since October 2009, apparently) that I had been meaning to try out for ages. So it seemed rather fitting that I bake some sour cream banana muffins for Christmas morning breakfast.

I followed the instructions and measurements to a tee fromhere (except halving the sugar and reducing the sour cream to 2/3 cup since it was all we had left, of course) but or some reason my ‘batter’ was more like a dough. In fact, my just awoken mother asked me why I baking mashed potatoes… That, is what my ‘batter’ looked like. Despite this, I just optimistically thought that everything would sort itself out in the oven. It did not. My ‘muffins’, if you could call them that, remained identical in shape as when I put them in the oven. As oblong clumps of dough. 

As upsetting as it was to know that the centrepiece of Christmas breakfast was an utter failure, this cloud came with a silver lining. I would have been more than happy to toss this recipe into the ‘do not attempt ever again’ pile, that is, if they didn’t taste so darn amazing. They had just enough banana flavour, and the full fat sour cream added great richness to them. So if I just ignored the fact that they were supposed to be muffins, I had actually made quite impressive dense scone biscuit type things…

Maybe the banana wasn’t ripe enough (it was of prime eating, but not baking, ripeness), or the extra sour cream and sugar would have made a difference. But even with half the prescribed amount of sugar as the original recipe, these were more than sufficiently sweet. The original recipe actually recommends dipping the muffin tops into melted butter and then some cinnamon sugar, now that would have been an overload.

I do want to attempt these again, but with water added until I get a batter, not a dough. They have more than enough flavour and sweetness so that water wouldn’t dilute the taste down too much, so that’s not a worry. Guess we’ll have to wait until I have more sour cream sticking around to give these a second try!

Sour Cream Banana Muffins

Yield: 15 muffins

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
• 2/3 cup sour cream (I used full fat, but that’s definitely not necessary)
• 1 large mashed banana
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Enough water to get a batter consistency

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin or line it with paper baking cups.
2. In a large bowl, whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together. Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk egg and add sugar. Continue whisking until thick. Add the melted butter in two or three additions. Whisk in the sour cream in two additions, followed by the mashed banana. Add the vanilla.
4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the wet ingredients; gently fold with a spatula, being careful not to overmix.
5. Add enough water to reach ‘batter’ consistency
6. Divide the batter between the muffin cups. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean and the tops are lightly golden.
7.  Let cool completely on a rack

Per muffin:

132 calories | 8.2g sugar | 4.9g fat