I love being a mom. It’s the greatest “job” in the world and I wouldn’t trade it or anything. Although it has it’s ups and downs it’s still an amazing experience. My kids make my heart smile each and everyday, even when they are being typical teenagers and pushing every “button” they possible can. 🙂
I have always tried to spend quality time with my kids – both one-on-one and together with both of them. I think now more than ever I value each precious moment with them. They are teenagers now. My daughter is 16 and will be graduation high school in a couple of years. Before I know it she’ll spread her wings and fly off into the big world, with my son leaving the “nest” two years later.
Sigh…
The holiday season makes me want to spend even MORE time with my kids. The holidays are so much better with them in our lives.
Being teenagers, my kids don’t spend as much time with us as I’d like. After all, it’s “un-cool” to hang out with your parents. While that might be the case in their eyes, I can usually find things that they enjoy doing with dear old mom (and sometimes dad too).
My kids love to help me in the kitchen. My daughter sometimes toys with the idea of going to culinary school, which is fine with me. She loves going through my cookbooks and finding recipes she wants to try and make.
Recently we made yummy Salted Caramel Apple Crisp Bars together. Here is the recipe that we used.
Salted Caramel Apple Crisp Bars
Ingredients:
- 1 box of vanilla cake mix (if you can find an apple caramel cake mix even better!)
- 1 cup of Quaker Oats
- 1/2 cup of softened butter
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp of Cinnamon
- 2 cups of diced Granny Smith apples (or your favorite apple)
- 1 cup of caramel apple frosting (or several pieces of caramel candy).
- Sea Salt
Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
Spray a 9″ square baking pan with non-stick spray (we used a larger pan and it worked out fine).
Mix together cake mix, Quaker oats, butter, egg and cinnamon in a large bowl. Mix until it resembles course crumbs.
Remove 1 cup of the mixture and set it aside. With the remaining mixed spread it out in the bottom of the pan (try to cover the enter bottom of the pan – use a fork to spread it out as evenly as possible).
Put the pan into the over and bake for about 15 minutes.
Carefully remove the pan.
Top the mixture with the diced apples and spread them out evenly.
Sprinkle the reserved crumb mix on top and place the pan back into the over or another 15-20 minutes or until the crumb mix starts to brown.
Remove from the oven and let cool completely.
Once cool put the caramel frosting (or even regular caramel) into the microwave and microwave for approximately 15 seconds until melted. Drizzle the caramel on top of the mix.
Sprinkle with sea salt.
Slice into “bars” and enjoy. Put the remaining bars in a fridge (in an airtight container) and enjoy within a day or two.
For this recipe I let my daughter do almost all of the work. I diced the apples and put the pan in and out of the oven (the oven makes her nervous). She did about 90% of the recipe.
While we worked on the recipe we chatted about school, her friends and some boy who likes her. 🙂
I must say that they turned out great. I wish we had a smaller pan (9″) because the bars would have been thicker, but they were still delicious.
The perfect beverage to go with the warm Salted Caramel Apple Crisp Bars is an nice, cold glass of milk. Yummy! Quaker Oatmeal and it’s best friend milk go great together (and provides you with a good source of protein).
If you need some recipes you can enjoy making together with our family check out these great recipes from Quaker. They also go great with a cold glass of milk. You could even serve them for the holidays too (the Pumpkin Oat Streusel Muffins would make a wonderful dessert on Thanksgiving as well as the Autumn Fruit Cobbler).
Baked Autumn Apple Oatmeal with Raisins
Lemon Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins
Quaker and The Kroger Co. Family of Store wants to encourage families to spend quality time together and make things, Better Together. They are even doing things together to make things better for families across the country. It’s called Better Together + Tweet for a Cause. Together they will donate $25,000 to Feeding America to help feed families in need. Feeding America is one of my favorite charities and I am happy to support any campaign that helps them.
Please help this wonderful campaign and show your support by tweeting a picture of you and your family enjoying your oatmeal + milk creation. Please include @Quaker and #BetterTogether in your tweet so that they can see it.
If possible PLEASE share this with your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and blog readers (if you are a blogger).
If you would like to learn more about Better Together + Tweet for a Cause please visit the Better Together website.
You can also follow Quaker on their social media sites;
Twitter: @Quaker
Facebook: Quaker
Pinterest: Quaker Oats
For more information about Kroger Banner stores visit www.TheKrogerCo.com.
Do you have a favorite recipe you can make together with your family that incorporates Quaker oats and milk? I would love to hear about it. Feel free to comment and share it with me.
Kimberly
*I have partnered with Quaker Oats to bring you this post, however the opinions expressed are entirely my own and not influenced in any way.
Mary Happymommy says
The banana bread oatmeal recipe sounds great!
stephanie says
i wanna make this! great idea thanks
Wendy T says
I really felt what you are saying.
My son is 16 also. I am literally brought to tears if I think too much about him growing up and moving out. But then (and particularly from my perspective with my daughter’s death nine years and one day ago)….I have to remember it beats the heck out of them not growing up and moving on.
Still…how are we gonna do this, Kimberly? I don’t think there will be enough apple crisp in the whole wide world to fill that void, know what I mean?!
judy gardner says
these sound wonderful! i dont have kids but when my nephew was younger we spent lots of time in the kitchen together. i am so glad that we shared that time together!
Rosie says
How cute they are!! I’m chuckling reading your post, but it is hard to think of them leaving (although many kids stay longer, now, it is sooo expensive out there!!!). Culinary school sounds great if that is what she chooses – could open many doors! That apple crisp recipe sounds dynamite!!!!
Deb E says
I have so much squash to use maybe I can make squash oat streusel muffins! Growing up I wish my mom didn’t have to work so hard and had more time to spend with us girls but we did have some quality baking time when I was pretty little and that meant a lot. Thanks for sharing your family moments.
Tammy S says
It does go by quick, that’s for sure! I agree with you that there is nothing better then spending time with your kids. I love the holiday’s because they spend a lot more time hanging out in the kitchen helping me bake. I have got to try your Salted Caramel Apple Crisp Bars. Yum!
Alana Vester says
The holidays are the only time my kiddos want to be around. Most of the time they want to hang out with their friends, which is understandable, Mom’s old and their friends are cool. Lol
David says
Cooking is a great way to spend time together. We do it with our kids and we did it while we were dating.