Oatmeal Stout Whole Wheat Honey Bread (Revised)

So I am endeavoring to blog once a week... Thanks to Johnica! If she can do it, I can too! :D

This is what prompted the bread.

So we moved to College Station in August. My mom helped us move, and she was nice enough to buy us some stuff while she was here. We were perusing and saw oatmeal stout. I LOVE oatmeal, so what do I do? I'm like why not this? ... I'll tell you why... It tastes like a stale Guinness Extra Stout mixed with coffee. Now as you might know, I am a tea addict, like pretty literally, but I am NOT a coffee fan. So what do you do with beer you literally can't drink because it tastes so bad? You make the next best thing: beer bread! Well I've never done this before so here goes the experiment via Peanut Butter Boy (where you will find the original recipe). So of course you know me... I had to mess with it. ;)  The comparison recipes are as follows:

Ingredients:

• 3 cups whole wheat flour (or WW pastry flour or spelt flour)
• I used plain old whole wheat flour.
• 1 cup extras (optional Scrap the optional and try anything. I bet the fruit loop beer would be awesome with dried fruit in it!)
• I used rolled oats (because it was oatmeal stout).
• 2 tablespoons raw sugar
• I used 1 tablespoon of honey because you know we don't do sugar in here.
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• I used 2 teaspoons baking powder &
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda (because of the acidity of the honey)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• I used 1/2... because I forgot to read the amount. haha.
• 1 (12oz) bottle beer
• This is where that horrible oatmeal stout comes in... Please feel free to use ANY other beer.

• Extra Additions:
• 1-2 tablespoons of melted butter
• enough oatmeal to cover the top of the loaf

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 and put rack in the center of the oven.
2. Add all dry ingredients to a large bowl, making sure to lightly spoon the flour into measuring cups to avoid using too much. Whisk together all the dry ingredients.
3. Lightly grease a 9 x 5 bread pan with butter or cooking spray.
4. Pour beer (and honey) into the dry mixture and stir to with a wooden spoon. (Supposedly here it gets tough to stir, but I bet because I used honey instead of sugar that mine was a smidge too wet for that nonsense.)
5. Transfer dough to your bread pan and press down gently so it spreads out evenly.
6. Pour butter over the top of the loaf. Then the oatmeal... or vice versa...
7. Bake for 1 hour. Let sit for 5 minutes in the pan.
8. Slice thin and spread on butter or nut butter or not. 

Before Bake

After Bake

So it didn't rise like I would have liked it too, but it was certainly tasty! :) More baking powder next time!

This is from the revised ingredients. It rose quite a bit more. Still as tasty!

Peanut Butter Boy said: "Leftover bread will stay good for a week, but toast it first to restore the crispiness. You can also freeze the loaf for several weeks."

Dinner? I thought we were doing Dessert.

Ok I confess:
1) I hardly post like I should as I seem to have all the time in the world.
&
2) Sometimes having sweets for dinner just sounds so much better than actually cooking a meal.

So I started looking for ideas online for cookies since Nathan didn't want chocolate chip. Weird right? So I stumble upon an idea for almond-coconut oatmeal cookies. Now oatmeal cookie is my favorite so I got down to business realizing half way through that of course I had picked a "healthy" recipe. Oops. All the better for me to mess with it though since chances as better than not that it would have a funny texture anyway. I hampered the recipe so much though that even putting the original up here just seems silly.

So ingredients:

DRY
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour (pastry or otherwise)
3/4 tsp of baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup of UNSWEETENED shredded coconut
1/2 chopped almonds

MOIST
1/2 cup butter (yes real honest to goodness butter)
1 to 2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar free table syrup (if this freaks you out, just use all real maple syrup)
1/4 cup real maple syrup (for flavor mainly so if you can handle all sugar free, go for it)

TOPPING
cinnamon for sprinkling
stevia for sprinkling (i prefer Truvia)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F
2. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
3. Place all dry ingredients into a bowl and mix well.
4. Brown butter and let cool slightly. (you can skip this step, but you'll lose a LOT of flavor. just saying)
5. Mix all wet ingredients together.
6. Mix wet and dry ingredients together.
7. Make small balls and place onto the cookie sheet.
8. Squash down for flat cookies and leave round for fat cookies (these don't spread).
9. Sprinkle with cinnamon and stevia.
10. Bake for 12-15 minutes.
11. Cool for as long as you can wait... about 30 seconds for us.

They go great with milk and tea. They have more of a muffin-y texture the fatter they are from the lessened amount of butter/oil in them. No matter the texture, cookie or muffin, they are tasty. :]