A recipe for a festive and delicious Christmas morning oatmeal that uses a caramel sauce made from orange peel, raisins, ginger, vanilla, and spices. A perfect holiday breakfast!
Christmas Morning Oatmeal with Ginger Raisin Caramel
Course: BreakfastCuisine: American1.5
cupsIngredients
1 orange
7 oz. (1 cup) granulated sugar
8 oz. (1 cup) water
1½ oz. (¼ cup) golden raisins
1 oz. (a 2½-inch piece) fresh (unpeeled) ginger, sliced as thinly as possible
1 vanilla bean sliced in half lengthwise
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbs butter
Prepared oatmeal, for serving
Cream, for serving (optional)
Directions
- Use a vegetable peeler to remove and then mince the peel from one half of the orange. Set the minced peel aside and eat the orange.
- Heat the sugar and water over a medium-high flame (setting 4 of 9), stirring until the sugar is dissolved, about 3 minutes.
- Stir in minced peel, raisins, ginger, vanilla, anise, and cinnamon and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook without stirring until the liquid is quite thick, almost boils dry, and begins to lightly caramelize. Off heat, stir in butter.
- Scoop a heaping tablespoonful (more or less to taste) into a single serving of prepared oatmeal, avoiding or discarding the cinnamon and anise as you come upon them. (Drizzle with cream.) Store remaining caramel in the refrigerator.
Notes
- Substitutions: thinly sliced dried apricots, prunes, and/or dried pears for (or inaddition to) the raisins; half-and-half or milk for the cream
Social Learning: tips & tricks
This dried-fruit caramel seems even better once it’s been refrigerated overnight. If you want to return it to a liquid state before use, heat it in the microwave or on the stovetop. However, this isn’t necessary. It will easily blend with a hot bowl of oatmeal with just a bit of stirring. Or if you make your oatmeal in the microwave (see below), you can plop the caramel into the bowl before microwaving and stir afterward.
Prefer a butterscotch to a caramel? Substitute brown sugar for the granulated sugar.
There are many ways to make oatmeal.
Here’s my go-to method: scoop a moderately heaping 1/3-cupful of old-fashioned oats into a cereal bowl. Add 1/3 of milk and 1/3 cup of water. Add a heaping tablespoonful of ginger raisin caramel. Microwave for 3 minutes at 90% power.
Watch carefully; the mixture could boil over. The size, shape, and material of the bowl seems to have a huge impact on this. If you do experience problems, use a different bowl next time, or lower the power percentage on the microwave (in which case you may have to increase the timing).
Like a larger or smaller serving of oatmeal? Switch to a 1/2-cup or a 1/4-cup measure for the oats, milk, and water. Like your oatmeal thicker or thinner? Add or subtract from the microwave timing.
The Backstory
This recipe is a spin-off of one of my favorite cocktails.
If you make the cocktails (not for breakfast, or course … but then I guess it depends on what time you get up), you’ll wind up with most of the ingredients you need for this ginger raisin caramel. The cocktail recipe suggests that you discard those ingredients, but if you’d rather use them to make this ginger raisin caramel, don’t crush the spices as the cocktail recipe indicates. That way, once you’ve strained the cocktail syrup, you can use the strained solids for Step 2 of this recipe. Add the minced peel and continue with the remaining steps.
If you make the ginger raisin caramel from what’s left over from making the cocktail syrup, you will have bled off a lot of the ingredients’ flavors before you make the caramel, but the ingredients have so much flavor that this is a negligible concern.
Outro
You could add this ginger raisin caramel to a bowl of oatmeal at any time of year, although this blend of spices seems Christmassy to me. I can just about guarantee that if you serve this in the morning to overnight Christmas guests, it will be one of the highlights of their time with you. It’s quite amazing the way it elevates a simple bowl of oatmeal.
Christmas Morning Oatmeal with Ginger Raisin Caramel
Credit for images on this page: Make It Like a Man! unless otherwise credited. This content was not solicited by anyone, nor was it written in exchange for anything. Thank you, Kesor. Make It Like a Man! is ranked by Feedspot as #15 in the Top 30 Men’s Cooking Blogs.
Keep up with us on Bloglovin’
