In between eating all these delicious recipes I’ve been making, I’ve had to manage some expectations, that is my expectations of trying to stay fit.  I’ve been trying to eat healthier meals… most of the time, but when I ‘m cooking and baking it’s not so easy.  Food Blogging makes a girls hips jiggle.

After years of struggling with a system  I’ve managed to get myself on a fairly decent exercise regime, losing a sweet amount of weight since I began.  Let’s hope with this fall, winter, holidays and all the good food this season brings, I don’t find myself heading into an eating frenzy!  To prevent this from happening, I’ve introduced some foods that carry their own weight and mine too.

I’m a huge fan of oatmeal, especially oatmeal cookies, but more on those later. Right now I’m enjoying this new change and eating steal cut oats for breakfast, though sometimes I have them for lunch or dinner.  They make a satisfying meal and you can dress them up as a sweet or savory dish.

While thinking of ways to make these steel cut oats… truth be told, I was looking for a cookie recipe.  I remembered reading Two Peas & Their Pod and their version of an incredibly yummy Cream Brulee Oats recipe and was immediately drawn into the sweet, creamy, chewy, nutty, cinnamon goodness so I had to try it.  One snag was that I had no raisins in the pantry and we don’t have brulee torch (Dear Jeff, for Christmas I would love a brulee torch).  Once I have my brulee torch I plan on making this exactly to Maria’s recipe.  In the meantime I made a few changes.

This is my spin on the recipe…  Here’s what you’ll need:

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup steel cut oats

4 cups boiling water

1/4 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon vanilla bean paste

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

In a large saucepan, add the water, butter and bring to a boil, add the steel cut oats, reduce to low heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add heavy cream and vanilla bean paste to oatmeal stirring until ingredients are combined, cook for 10 minutes. Serve steel cut oats in bowl and top with remaining brown sugar and cinnamon.

Those cookies I mentioned earlier, I’ll be posting a recipe with steel cut oats real soon.  In the meantime if you have a brulee torch, try making Maria’s version from Two Peas & Their Pod and let me know how good it is!