Saturday Creations

I've been trying to cook and bake a lot of my own food lately and I've been wanting to give my blog a bit of character, so I'm going to start Saturday Creations to give myself something to do.  So, I cooked pearled barley for the first time a few days ago and was thinking about other things i could make with it. And so I grabbed a few fruits and some brown sugar and made this:

Okay so the recipe is really simple and easy to make. here are the ingredients you need below:

1 1/2 cup of pearled barley

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

1 can of sliced peaches

1 or 2 handfuls of fresh blueberries

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

First, set your oven to 350F. Measure out your barley and set it aside. You then boil the appropriate amount of water for the barley. In my case, the package said 2 1/2 cups for 1 cup of barley, so about 3 1/4 cups of water for 1 1/2 cups of barley. Bring water to a boil and then add barley and turn stove down to medium heat. Let barley simmer for 30-40 minutes, or until it is soft on the outside and a little chewy and firm on the inside. There should be almost  no water left over, a little bit is fine and will keep it moist. Add the brown sugar and take your stove off. You're going to want to cut up your peaches into chunks, and then throw them into the pot. Add the blueberries and stir them into the barley. Add your vanilla extract and stir that in as well. Next, you can either choose to use a muffin pan like I did (because I have a cookie pan and a muffin pan and nothing else) or you can use a cake pan. Pour mixture into the pan of your choice and spread it out evenly. You can also sprinkle a little extra brown sugar on top. Bake for 10-12 minutes and voila! It's finished! 

Fairly easy, fairly inexpensive and really delicious. I ate mine with vanilla greek yogurt and a cup of coffee, but a glass of orange juice would be just as good. 

Have a good Saturday everyone :]