Oatmeal Unhinged

Author Aprille Pappas has answered the call for amazing hot oatmeal where she brings together easy-to-use recipes for gorgeous and delicious hot oatmeal breakfast dishes with surprising flavors and textures that produce stunning bowls that are bursting with juicy flavors and bold colors. At the center of the author's passion is her love of oatmeal along with her vision to create and present terrifically attractive, tasty, and nutritious hot oatmeal recipes, with the emphasis on tasty! It's the perfect concept for the cook who has every cookbook and the novice who doesn't.

Luscious hot oatmeal breakfast dishes are as pretty as they are tasty, as seen in the beautiful photographs throughout the book. Recipes include mouth-watering dishes like orange blintzes, southern biscuit gravy, egg and avocado and mini smore's oatmeal pies. It's downright hard to believe that plain hot oatmeal lies at the base of these unique and tempting topping combinations.

The cookbook begins with a short history of oats and how a former President-farmer was among the first Americans to grow oats. Little did he know that oats would become a wildly popular food that would stand the test of time. The early oat industry was fraught with challenges such as how to process oats and how to make the hard hulled grain more palatable, despite adding fresh farm ingredients like butter, milk and sugar.

Today consumers have a variety of choices when it comes to different types of oats. Whether unprocessed, cut or rolled, each preparation produces a different texture and flavor. Fortunately, natural oats have a soft, bland flavor that tends to blend well with a wide variety of toppings, including different types of dairy and plant based milks, nuts, fruits, sweeteners, yogurts and sauces. The author has crafted the use of everyday crunchy foods such as cookies, cereals and baked piecrusts and uses them to transform simple bowls of hot oatmeal into crunchy gastronomical delights.

Among a few signature toppings are croutons that sit on top of the oatmeal dishes; not the salad type but croutons that are made from quick or sweet breads such as lemon poppy or banana bread and other baked goods such as scones and waffles. There's a handy list of suggested breads and other baked goods along with some unexpected choices including leftovers.

Nuts are integral to truly delicious oatmeal. They deliver crunch, bold flavor and pretty colors. Whether nuts are raw, roasted, toasted or dry roasted, a very small amount of nuts (chopped, ground or nut meal) add big flavor while offering healthy benefits. And then there is nut butter and sauces that are easy to make and are the ultimate compliment to oatmeal, like "cream to coffee".

Still, one of the most popular ways to eat hot oatmeal is with sugar or sweeteners such a brown sugar. Fortunately there are many types of sweeteners from which to choose; fruit flavored breakfast syrups, jams, jellies and fruits spreads, citrus curds, plant-based sweeteners like agave and honey. And if the ample list of sweeteners in the book doesn't strike your taste buds, there are suggestions on how to create custom syrup flavors.

The recipes in the book are truly unique in many ways, including the way they are made using Aprille's signature method called "stacking" whereby the ingredients and toppings are stacked on top of a scoop of oatmeal. And because stacking is easy and fun, it's a also great way to introduce kids to oatmeal. When using a spoon to cut through the stack of layered toppings, each individual flavor and texture is distinct, alternative to toppings that are mixed into the hot oatmeal.....