Hello! I’d say happy Wednesday, but it’s…just Wednesday. The Wednesday after a holiday weekend in the middle of a pandemic. Happy is a stretch.
But you know what is happy—er, what is making me happy? This Easy Stovetop Peanut Butter Granola. It’s super crisp, crunchy and peanut buttery, and took fifteen whole minutes to make. That’s the magic of stovetop granola. When you skip the oven, it takes 1/3 of the time! Oh, and it only makes a quart. Add this to the list of small batch recipes we all need this year!
This isn’t my first go-round with peanut butter granola or stovetop granola. Nope! This is a combination of two of my favorite granolas for maximum efficiency. Maximum efficiency is important when we’re discussing how to get Easy Stovetop Peanut Butter Granola into our faces. We’re trying to do it efficiently. To that end, there are five steps in the stovetop granola-making process and they’re all super easy.
Combine the wet ingredients. Whisk your oil, brown sugar, maple syrup, natural peanut butter, vanilla, cinnamon and salt together in a measuring cup. This provides the majority of the flavor in your granola and help it get good and crispy.
Toast the dry ingredients. Combine your oats and chopped peanuts in a heavy pan over medium heat. Stir them around for about 10 minutes, until fragrant and a little darker in color. Don’t burn ‘em.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry. Pour your peanut butter/maple/brown sugar/oil mixture into the oats and peanuts.
Toast everything together. This is the part where you stir everything for another five minutes, until the sticky stuff is all absorbed and everything has darkened and smells very peanut buttery.
Cool. Scatter your granola on a rimmed baking sheet on a rack and let it come to room temperature. This is the part where your granola gets real good and crispy while you decide how you want to serve it. I highly recommend yogurt, raspberries and an artful drizzle of peanut butter.
You may notice that Easy Stovetop Peanut Butter Granola isn’t particularly cluster-prone. This doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but if you are a cluster person, you can reduce the oats and peanuts down to three cups total volume and keep everything else the same. Alternatively, swap the maple syrup for a thicker sweetener like honey or brown rice syrup, and maybe bump it up to 5-6 tablespoons. Either of those should work some clustering magic.
But, real talk? This salty-sweet stuff is already pretty magical. I mean, maybe this year has lowered my expectations, but peanut butter granola you can make in fifteen minutes? Magic.
Easy Stovetop Peanut Butter Granola
makes about a quart
1/4 cup olive oil (or coconut oil or canola oil)
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup well-stirred natural peanut butter (creamy-style works too)
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups honey-roasted or salted peanuts, roughly chopped
Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Set aside.
Combine oil, brown sugar, peanut butter, maple syrup, vanilla, cinnamon and salt in a liquid measuring cup. Whisk together with a fork. Set aside.
Heat a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. Add oats and chopped peanuts. Cook, stirring constantly, until very fragrant and toasted (about 10 minutes). Do not burn.
Add liquid ingredients and stir to coat the oats and peanuts. Continue cooking, stirring constantly for 4-5 additional minutes, until sweeteners are incorporated and granola no longer looks wet.
Remove granola from heat. Transfer mixture to parchment-lined pan and allow to cool completely.
Store granola in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three weeks.
Does anybody else have a fridge full of zucchini right now? I can barely close the my crisper drawer! Between 
Zucchini Coffee Cake Muffins are what happens when you take all the good things about 
Here, zucchini serves as a replacement for the usual liquid ingredients in our batter, like milk and sour cream. While I usually suggest wringing the shredded squash in a towel to remove excess moisture, this is one of those rare zucchini recipes where you can bypass the wringing and throw it directly into the batter. You need all the moisture you it can offer—when you first add the squash to the batter, it’ll be super dry, but after sitting a few minutes, it’ll be thick, rich and ready for the oven!
The rest of the recipe is standard muffin and coffee cake fare, all the way down to the crunchy crumb and glaze. That said, I won’t tell anybody if you eat one and call it a serving of vegetables.
It seems like every July my mind goes to Maine while my body stays in New York and bakes in preparation to join it…in 
I’m not saying I manifested a Maine trip, but I’m not saying I didn’t (with a lot of VJ’s help and a big check). What I am saying is that when I started testing these gluten-free, vegan Oatmeal Waffles a few weeks ago, I could only daydream about making them on a sunny 
Until then, these Oatmeal Waffles are my current weekend breakfast obsession. They’re fairly quick and easy to make, and have a slightly sweet whole grain flavor—no cardboard here, I promise. These are real, delicious, syrup-in-every-divot, Saturday morning-worthy 
The batter is made with eight ingredients: gluten-free old-fashioned oats, non-dairy milk, applesauce, touches of oil and sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. It comes together in the blender and, after resting for ten minutes, makes four burnished, crispy-edged, fluffy-centered waffles—enough for two or four people, or eating one now and freezing three for when a craving hits. And oh, it will hit.
For those who don’t need or want their waffles to be 
Again, I’m not saying I manifested a trip to Maine, but if you put intention—in this case, waffles and a dream—out into the world (and write a check and ask VJ to send a series of emails to the powers that be), sometimes good things happen. Like vacation and a freezer-full of Oatmeal Waffles.
I want you to know that these took me a while—like 24 test batches, and also years of making subpar pancakes and wondering if there was something wrong with me or if I should give in to a lifetime of Bisquick.
These Buttermilk Pancakes are on the thick and fluffy side of things—perfect for piling high with butter and maple syrup. They are so soft and tender that I can’t get enough, which is a very good thing considering that I have 24 batches-worth triple-wrapped in plastic and stacked into columns in my freezer. I’d invite you all over for pancakes and 
Anyway…I didn’t reinvent the wheel here. Flour, sugar, baking powder & soda, salt, buttermilk, melted butter, eggs, and vanilla—those are the ingredients you’ll find in most buttermilk pancakes, including mine. You’ll notice that the volume of wet ingredients far surpasses the dry, so these are fluffy but not heavy or rubbery.
I don’t have any magical tips for you except to rest the batter for a few minutes (it will change dramatically as the gluten develops), make sure your surface isn’t too hot, and don’t cook your batter in too much fat. That last bit of advice seems to be the secret to evenly-browned pancakes, at least when it comes to this recipe. I brush the pan with oil and then wipe out any excess with a paper towel before pouring batter.
These are buttermilk pancakes, so I tested them primarily with full- and low-fat buttermilk. If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can use a 
You may think this batter is particularly thick, or at least I do (maybe from my lifetime of Bisquick?), but it’s still pourable. I find that rotating my wrist/the measuring cup 90 degrees while pouring batter onto the pan helps to develop a good round shape…not that I’ve ever discriminated against a pancake based on its shape. Pancake positivity all the way.
As for when to make and eat Buttermilk Pancakes, I know the weekend is traditional, but days are just days now, and there’s never really a bad time for pancakes, now is there? Maybe, just this once, be like me–Stop nitpicking and get out of your own damn way. Very good, very easy pancakes happen when you stop nitpicking and get out of your own damn way.
e2 bakes brooklyn 