The Southern husband and I are great lovers of oatmeal for dinner. Warm and wonderful, quick and filling, and when we have it for supper we usually jazz it up in a savory way instead of going sweet – our favorite is with some cheddar cheese and a soft-cooked egg.  But given the Winterpacolypse that we are currently smack in the middle of, one particularly blustery night I decided the only thing left to so was do was go straight for the dessert-meets-dinner with an apple pie version of oatmeal.  Which by the way would be perfectly perfect for breakfast and lunch, too!

Apple pie oatmeal starts with steel cut oats – those are the hard little oat nuggets that cook up into hearty, nutty wonderfulness as opposed to the more typical rolled oats variety.  Steel cut oats make all the difference in this recipe – think of them as playing the part of the pie crust!

 

And obviously you have apples.

I use one apple per serving to make sure everyone gets their fair, generous share of apple deliciousness.  I like Macintosh apples for this recipe because they cook up to just the right amount of tender and crisp.  No need to peel them – just slice them into nice bite-sized pieces.

I cook everything up with just enough cinnamon sugar to give it a spicy sweetness, and then I usually drizzle a little warm maple syrup and cream on top, which is what I have in the recipe below.  But I have to tell you what I did the last time I made this, just because it is so dang wonderful.  My friend Jen, who knows how much I love all things cooking and all things Vermont, gave me one of these a little while ago…

That, my friend, is a maple cube.  As in, a sold little block of maple syrup in hard cube form.  I took my handy microplane grater and grated a nice little pile of maple shavings on the top of each dish of oatmeal, where it promptly melted into a puddle of maple heaven.

I’m already thinking of a million other things I can grate my maple cube over.  A cup of tea.  A hunk of salty parmesan cheese.  Into my open mouth.  Etc.  But in the meantime, it was the perfect finishing touch to the apple pie oatmeal.

Can you say, lick the bowl?

Stay warm out there my friends!

Courtesy of:  http://www.framedcooks.com/2015/02/apple-pie-oatmeal.html