Pumpkin Spice Instant Oatmeal

I admit it...I buy a big box of instant oatmeal at Costco every month. My kids love it, they can make it themselves..and I get to lay in bed a little bit longer on the mornings it's on the menu. (They even make it for the toddler!) I love my kids. The last couple times I have bought it, ALL of the maple and brown sugar are clumpy and we cannot break it apart. I took the first box back when I realized the problem and got another one. However the second box did the same thing. So this time they ate all the other flavors and I won't be buying more. I found a recipe online for instant oatmeal packets and did a little tweaking..and voila!! I made two big batches of two different flavors that will hopefully last us a couple weeks. (big family problems)

First things first..here is what you need! (You can put these into individual baggies- but that is not necessary and creates a lot of waste.)

10 Cups Quick cooking oats
1t salt
2 Cups brown sugar
1 Cup powdered milk
3t cinnamon
3t pumpkin pie spice

Take 6 cups of the oats and put it in a big bowl. Put the rest of the oats (2 cups at a time) in the blender and blend into a powder, i just pulse it. This is what will thicken your oatmeal and give it the instant texture we are used to. Then mix the two kinds of oats together. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix together thoroughly. Put into a good air tight container.

To make: use 1/2 cup of oatmeal mixture and add hot or boiling water until you reach your desired consistency. My husband likes his oatmeal cooked in the microwave, so you can also add some water then pop it in the microwave for a minute or two until it is cooked that way.


I also made Apple Cinnamon flavor- Keep everything the same except go up to 4t cinnamon and add 3 cups crumbled dehydrated apples and omit the pumpkin pie spice.

I'm not sure of cost comparison with store bought, but I do know homemade is way better because there are less ingredients. Also, I buy everything in bulk- so the only thing I might have to go back to the store for to make more would be pumpkin pie spice.

I put my label maker to good use too ;-)

Practically Perfect Pumpkin Snicker-doodles

I bought some pumpkin Snicker-doodles at Wal-Mart the other day because we had company and my girls couldn't eat the pie we were having because it had traces of nuts in it. The cookies were good, but a little too pumpkiny for our liking. I searched online and couldn't find a recipe I was happy with. I found one but it had no cream of tarter in it, and that is a main ingredient of snicker-doodles, so i was skeptical it would be like I wanted. I decided to alter my regular snicker-doodle recipe and see how it goes. It went very well and my family loves them. Hopefully you will like them too.

1 C butter (softened)
1 1/2 C sugar
1 C pumpkin
2 t vanilla
2 eggs
2 3/4 C flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking soda
2 t cream of tartar
1/2 t nutmeg
1t cinnamon

Seperate small bowl:
3T sugar
2 t cinnamon

Cream butter and sugar together in a Kitchen Aid mixer. Add in eggs and vanilla and continue mixing. Then add in pumpkin. Mix dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and mix together. Add those into the mixer with the wet ingredients. After mixing well put in the refrigerator for 2 hours to chill. Pre-heat oven to 400*. Get a scoop of cookie dough and roll into a ball and roll in cinnamon/sugar then place onto cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, take off pan and cool on wire rack. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

My kids have been begging for french toast for breakfast the last few days. I told them they have to wake up and not be staaaaarving...for me to make it because they cannot have two breakfasts. So they decided to comply and were very patient while I made it this morning. I have found lots of recipes all with this title for french toast but none I loved, so I decided to mash a couple together and do some tweaking and came up with my own. I liked it, the kids LOVED it...next time I'm gonna add a wee bit more pumpkin so we can taste more of it.

You will need:

A loaf of texas toast
4 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/4-1/2 cup of pumpkin ( I only used the 1/4)
1/2 t pumpkin pie spice
1t cinnamon
1t vanilla

*Butter, powdered sugar & syrup*

Mix the eggs, milk, pumpkin, spices and vanilla together.

Warm up your skillet or griddle and spray it or put some oil on it.

Dip bread in mixture and kind of soak it and put it in the pan.. after a couple minutes turn it over and do the same on the other side, make sure the egg is cooked good on both sides. 

Butter each piece, add a sprinkling of powdered sugar and some syrup and enjoy!! My kiddos sure did!!! Look at those empty plates!!!