Weekends are for Feasting: Baked Maple Oats with Peanut Butter Dream Sauce

Hi again!

Wow, it feels like an eternity since I've posted on here. School and, well, life, have gotten in the way of my ability to just sit down and spend some leisurely time on the interwebz! Papers, midterms, projects...you get the picture. Luckily, I have some of the best roomies I coulda asked for who keep me sane through my rugged journey through the mountains of homework I have! In addition to the fabulous ladies I live with, I think that what has really been keeping me sane for these past few months is peanut flour. Yup, I said it, peanut flour does a happy Christygee make. I've used it in everything, from a quick peanut sauce on spaghetti squash, to oatmeal, to breakfast oatmeal peanut butter shakes. For FOUR tablespoons of this stuff, you get a whopping 16 grams of protein for only 110 calories. I don't know about you, but I'm a protein fiend and I'm always keeping my eyes open for low-cal, high-protein treats. In addition to the peanut flour, which you can find here, I have also been experimenting with some Walden Farms Calorie Free Pancake Syrup. It's surprisingly much cheaper than I expected it to be and a fantastic complement to the peanut flour. I've used it on pancakes, roasted squash, and oatmeal.

Hi there.

Anywho, I woke up early this morning, as I always do, to make my favorite baked oatmeal with peanut butter ~~cream~~ dream sauce. It's gluten-free and vegan, which means it makes my tummy nothing but full and happy! It's also high in fiber thanks to the oats, and high in protein thanks to the fantabulous (yup) peanut flour and *drum roll please* tofu.

Here's what I used:

For the oatmeal:

½ cup gluten-free oats
¼ cup unsweetened applesauce
1 TB calorie free syrup
1/8 tsp maple extract
¼ tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup unsweetened plain almondmilk
pinch of sea salt (I never use table salt! Not a fan.)

I mixed everything together and poured it into a sprayed ramekin at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, then I broiled it for about 5 minutes, until the top got nice and golden. While it baked, I made the peanut sauce.

For the sauce:

½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp maple extract
1 ½ TB Walden Farms calorie free syrup (feel free to try real maple, honey, agave, brown sugar, etc. but I can't make any promises as I haven't tried it)
3 TB unsweetened plain almondmilk (or more if your blender disagrees with the thickness of the sauce)
About 3-4 oz tofu (I used TJ’s organic firm, but silken would probably work better!)
3 TB peanut flour
pinch of sea salt

Throw everything into a blender and give it a good whirl until it's silky smooth. The peanut flour soaks up moisture in my blender quite a bit so it may need a little encouragement in the form of a spoon pushing the sauce toward the blender blade. But BE CAREFUL, I don't want you doing this while the blender is ON and ending up with blade-spoon intermingling. No. Bad idea. Obviously.

Once the oatmeal is cooked to your liking, you can either dirty more dishes by removing it from the ramekin (in case you can't tell by the photos, I get an abnormally large amount of satisfaction watching the sauce flow down the sides...like lava...delicious peanutty lava cream...) orrrrrrrrrr........you can be ~~boring~~ cool too (I guess) and simply pour the peanut butter sauce directly onto it.

Photographs.