Apple Oatmeal With Baobab and Brown Butter

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Do you like oatmeal, cinnamon, apples and superfoods? This recipe will knock your socks off!

I love oatmeal. But I used to have it so fixed in my mind that carbs were not good for you and made you gain weight, that oatmeal was something I only fondly remembered as being a indulgent breakfast that was warm, cozy and topped with a melting pool of butter.

After doing mostly Keto style of eating for a long time, imagine my excitement when I discovered Trim Healthy Mama! Here was a plan that not only allowed carbs, they were considered crucial!

It is not the carbs fault that you gain weight. You simply need to know a few tricks about the best way to eat them. When we are eating the Trim Healthy Mama way, we keep the meals where we are eating carbs low in fat. This allows us to easily burn through our food instead of giving our body more fuel than it needs.

You can read more about the different Trim Healthy Mama meal types in this post.

This does mean a melting pool of butter on top of your oatmeal is not the best way to eat it if you are trying to loose weight. But don’t worry! Save that butter for a different meal. There are plenty of ways to make your oatmeal just as indulgent tasting while still keeping it low in fat.

Well, don’t QUITE get rid of the butter….

Thankfully, in THM E meals, which are the ones that include carbs, we can still have about a teaspoon of fat. Keeping some fats in your meals actually helps your body absorb nutrients better! In this recipe, the ultimate crowning touch is a teaspoon of brown butter on the very top!

[Of course, feel free to just use regular butter or even coconut oil on top of your oatmeal if you don’t feel like making brown butter from scratch!]

What is brown butter

Brown butter is what you get after you take regular butter and simmer it long enough that it browns into something that is pure, liquid, foodie gold!

It has a wonderful caramelized, nutty smell and taste and adds a gourmet touch to any food you use it on. All while being extremely easy to make!

How do I make it?

To make brown butter, take however much regular butter you want to brown, and put it in a medium sized saucepan. Melt it and bring to a simmer. Simmer the butter over low heat until it has turned a rich golden brown color.

How long this will take depends on how much butter you are using, but it isn’t that long. Usually around 4-5 minutes, unless you are just browning a very small amount, like a tablespoon or two.

Keep a close watch, since once it starts to brown it can burn quite quickly, and burnt butter definitely is not the wonderful thing that brown butter is! The butter will initially foam up quite a bit but once it is turning brown this should go down.

Remove from the heat once it is as brown as you want. I like to get mine as brown as I can without it actually burning since this gives it the best flavor. And that flavor is the bomb! The smell is just as good. In fact, sometimes I go to the fridge just to take a whiff from the brown butter jar. Someone needs to come up with a candle that smells like that!

Anyway, once it is done, remove it from the heat and let it cool a few minutes. Then pour it through a small metal sieve to strain off any little butter pieces that will be at the bottom. I say metal because one time I used plastic not thinking that of course hot butter will melt cheap plastic. So learn from my mistake! Lol. If you don’t mind having the little bits, you can also just pour it into jars and not bother straining the butter.

Pour it into a jar, or several small jars and let it cool completely. You can then store it in the fridge, or if you have quite a bit, you can put some of it in the freezer!

Ta Da! You have just made brown butter!

Is brown butter the same as ghee?

Brown butter and ghee are quite similar, but the main difference is the ghee has all the milk solids removed leaving behind pure butter fat that even dairy free people can usually tolerate. Brown butter, on the other hand, still has the milk solids in it, especially if you opt not to strain it.

Ghee is also not quite as nutty brown. It is pretty much made the same way, though. You simmer it or cook it in the oven until the milk solids have separated from the butter fat and then strain it through cheesecloth. I have always made ghee at an even lower temperature than brown butter as well. If you would like to try your hand at making ghee, here is a tutorial. I especially like doing the oven method, like is shown in this post I linked, but there are also tutorials you can google for making it on the stovetop.

What are some ways I can use brown butter?

Other than putting it on top of oatmeal, like in todays recipe, there are many other ways to use brown butter!

-Saute kale in it for an amazing flavor.

-Use it to fry eggs.

-Put it on top of pancakes or waffles.

-Toss popcorn in melted brown butter instead of regular butter.

-Melt it and drizzle on top of veggies before roasting. Winter squash are especially good with brown butter!

-Toast nuts in it and use for topping warm grain salads or power bowls.

The other star of the show

Aside from that tiny little bit of brown butter that makes this dish amazing, the real star here is the delightful apple sauce that you spoon on top of the base oatmeal. It is sweet yet still slightly tart, and has my favorite superfood added!

That’s right, there is a tablespoon of baobab in this apple oatmeal topping! Again, this is something you can omit if you don’t have it, but baobab has a fruity tart flavor that goes so well with the apples.

It is also the highest source of Vitamin C on the planet, plus being full of other good for you minerals such as iron. I try to include baobab in my diet daily!

You can read more about baobab, plus get another way to use it, in this post: Immune Boosting Hot Nog.

How to eat this oatmeal

Yep, there’s a proper way to do it! You pour your oatmeal into a bowl and then sprinkle it with cinnamon, a bit of extra sweetener and a pinch of sea salt. This make a delicious sweet and salty little crust that you get a spoonful of in each bite!

After that, I’ll let you spoon on your apple topping and teaspoon of butter any way you like, lol.

This apple oatmeal is pure, fragrant, delicious cinnamon and apple goodness with each bite!

You can make a big batch and store leftovers in the fridge!

I give the ingredients for one serving of oatmeal in this recipe. But you can double, triple or make however many servings you want if you are feeding a group, or you want leftovers. I will make 3-4 servings of this and put it into individual containers for easy breakfasts at work.

The apple topping recipe makes enough for three servings of oatmeal. Possibly four depending how large your apples are!

Ok, here is the recipe!

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