Baking with a Dirty Blondie...Ginger

After I carbo-loaded on angel hair for absolutely no reason other than loving pasta, I had the urge to bake! I looked down in my own shame, remembered that I'm not currently rocking a tummy roll, and considered the state of my abs. NO COOKIES ALLOWED. 

SAVE THE ABLETS.

Cookinglight.com was a big fat failure for me tonight, so I resorted to other bloggers' goodies. Tina is a blogger from my home state of Massachusetts. Her healthy-eating and fitness blog is right up my alley -- she exercises her butt off, eats really healthy, but knows it's important to indulge...bc we can. Hence the name of her blog "Carrots and Cake." I perused her recipes and found Baked Banana Oatmeal. I made some modifications and created a very similar recipe.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup oats
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries
• 1 cup Blue Diamond almond milk, original flavor
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 banana, sliced

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350* F.

2. Combine the first six ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl.

3. Add milk and vanilla and stir.

4. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray. 

5. Add mixture to the pan.

6. Top the mixture with the sliced bananas. 

7. Bake for 30 minutes or until slightly browned.

8. Resist the temptation to immediately devour, and let cool. 

Makes 2-4 breakfast bars -- depends how hungry you are! 

I cut mine into 4 servings. Here is the estimated nutritional information that I calculated using livestrong.com.

Please note that this is a calculation using the above site and the specific products that I used.

Per 1/4 of total recipe: 
212 Calories

10g Fat

0mg Cholesterol

40mg Sodium

29.5 Carbohydrates

17.5g Sugar

2.75g Fiber

3.75g Protein

Enough science, onto the baking process. I'm such a blonde. Well, sort of. Let's not get into a 30 minute discussion about how I'm never quite sure what my hair color is. We'll just go with dirty blonde almost ginger. Oh, and my eyes? I-swear-they're-green-but-everyone-else-thinks-they're-blue. For this particular recipe, I was a ditzy, a.d.d. blonde. 

Step 1: Completed without difficulty. Pressing the up arrow to preheat an oven isn't hard.

Step 2: Beautiful success!

Step 3: Also a success!

Step 4: Where the !@#$%^&* is my loaf pan? I started to panic and rummage through the cabinets. Luna Bar stash, sweet!! Can you guess what my favorite flavor is?

Step 5-6: I settled for a little pyrex instead.

Step 7: The baking/sitting with anticipation by the oven process:

immediately after placing in the oven. 
i'm easily excited over baked goods.

ten minutes later. good grief, time is slow. 
i guess i'll clean up.

realizing that i make quite the disaster mess while baking:

oh, look, the spilled milk made a C!

10 minutes left, let's play on facebook/BBM/chug diet lemonade. 

clearly these three things are crucial in my life.

five minutes left. i can't sit still. 

except on the floor in front of the oven i guess.

Step 8: I MADE IT!

There you have it--brekkie bar sucess!