May 17

I am still firmly on my oatmeal-for-breakfast kick. About a year ago, my breakfast life was transformed because of this oatmeal and I haven’t looked back. Before that, I was definitely a cold-cereal girl but I can’t imagine going back. Who knows what will happen as it continues to warm up but these days I wake up craving something warm, comforting, and filling. My oatmeal is always jam-packed with fresh fruit, nuts and seeds and I definitely think that the 6-7 minutes that it takes to make the oatmeal in the morning is worth it, but I have started to wondering how I could make a big batch at the beginning of the week. Something I could have on hand, with nothing more than a quick scoop and perhaps a trip to the microwave needed for breakfast gratification. My first thought was how great it would be to be able to make a super healthy breakfast crisp, with all of the ingredients I usually use in my oatmeal.


This crisp is pretty much what I put in my regular oatmeal, except re-configured and baked. The strawberries are lightly sweetened with some maple syrup and fragranced with vanilla. The topping gets crispy and brown but still has some chew. It’s pretty much a 1:1 ratio of fruit and crisp, so you still get full from all of the oats and nuts. I added some of the seeds I normally add to my oatmeal too (just a couple of tablespoons of buckwheat hearts and sesame seeds) but if you don’t have them on hand you can omit them completely or replace them with something else that you like.

This crisp is also a great tasting dessert (especially if you serve it with some vanilla bean ice cream) and also perfect for brunches, because it serves multiple people at once, takes about 10 minutes to throw together and sits in the oven the rest of the time. Of course, as the summer season provides us with more and more beautiful fruit, the combinations are endless. I would love to try this with blackberries and peaches or plums. Even though I kept the flavors simple, you could spice it up with a little bit of cinnamon or nutmeg. The crisp-world is your oyster but this is a very good place to start.