Snickerdoodle Oatmeal

I served this with a little buttered toast.

I've always heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  My sister and I grew up getting ourselves ready for school each day alone.  Both of our parents worked and left the house before we were even awake usually.  Both my sister and I chose to sleep rather than eat breakfast, so we skipped the most important meal of the day.  During the summer months we would eat cereal each morning, occasionally pancakes or frozen waffles.  My Mom would always get on us for not eating breakfast, but there was no way we were going to wake up early to eat, sleep was precious.

When we had Titus I was determined to make breakfast for him each day and have him growing up eating breakfast.  He evolved to preferring Pop Tarts, Toaster Strudel, or cereal over time but occasionally would want to have something hot...well hotter than a toaster hot.  I have this HUGE hang up for wanting my children to eat homemade food and not reheated factory prepared food.  I can't really explain it, but it is a big deal to me.  I want them to ask for home made cookies over packaged, home made brownies over Little Debbie, and so on down the list.  Maybe it because I watched too much TV, who knows I certainly don't try to figure out my crazy quirks because there isn't enough time in the day.

Having just wrapped up a long Christmas break, extended by a visit from sweet long time friends, I stayed home to help Kendra get the kids ready for their day.  Titus brought home the classroom beta to babysit over the holiday, and he needed to go back to school.  I usually go to work early, before anyone is awake since I wake up at 5am everyday without an alarm clock.  The brisk morning made me think of oatmeal and so I just decided that I would make oatmeal for the kids and not ask what they wanted.   We have microwave packets of oatmeal that they usually eat, but I wanted to make something cooked on the stove.  

All of my kids loved this oatmeal!  This is a rare treat and very unusual for them to all agree that they love anything, let alone oatmeal.  Their reaction and praise for, "the best oatmeal on earth" made decide I'd better make it a recipe and get this written down.  Since I had to think of a name for this "recipe" I tried to associate the flavors and decided Snickerdoodle cookies is the closest flavor association I could make, thus the name.  The bonus is that saying, "snickerdoodle" is fun.  The picture above is Levi's serving, which needs to be room temperature or cooler because he doesn't like hot stuff.

Snickerdoodle Oatmeal

1 1/2 cups Instant Oatmeal

1 cup Milk

3/4 cup water

1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt

1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

6 Tablespoons butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 Tablespoons Cinnamon Sugar (plus some for garnish)

In a medium saucepan add milk and water, bring to a boil over medium heat.  When the milk and water come to a boil, add salt, vanilla, and oats, stirring well.  Cook over medium heat 2 minutes.  Remove from heat adding remaining ingredients.  Stir well to combine.  Taste and adjust to suit personal taste.  Garnish with cinnamon sugar (about a tablespoon for each serving).

4 generous servings

Notes:

• When you boil milk on the stove, be watchful.  You really don't want to walk off from a pot of milk in the stove.  When it comes to the boiling point, it doesn't boil like water, it swells and foams up.  If you aren't careful it will over flow and that's no fun to clean up!
• I think the vanilla adds a layer of flavor the compliments the cinnamon and sugar, it really helped finish off the dish, for me at least.
• I keep cinnamon sugar mixed up and in my pantry in a flour shaker.  The one I have is from pampered chef, but you can find them readily at most stores that sell kitchen duke.  My ratio is almost equal parts cinnamon to sugar.
• If you dont' think this tastes like a snickerdoodle that's ok, just change the name.
• Start to finish this was done and ready to eat in 20 minutes, maybe less.