This super healthy vegan breakfast is bursting with flavor due to the endangered ground cherry fruit and freshly ground cardamom.
The Story:
While pouring over a Baker Creek catalog, admiring the photographs and imagining how the wonderful descriptions of their varieties would manifest in real life, I came across Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry. I’d never heard of, much less tasted, a ground cherry. But I was intrigued.
Ground cherries aren’t in your grocery store, at least, not any I’ve ever seen. I haven’t had any luck finding them at farmers’ markets, either. And when I learned that not only is the ground cherry considered an endangered food, but that the Aunt Molly’s variety is included in the Ark of Taste, I decided to grow some.
I winter sowed some seeds, plopped the transplants in my community garden plot, and promptly forgot about them. When I returned, I noticed all these little tomatillo-like husks all around my plants. Related to the tomatillo, the ground cherry is most commonly called the ground cherry because the fruit is ripe once they fall from the plant onto the ground.
Ground Cherries on the ground around the plant.
The flavor is unique, and though it has been described in turns as citrus, tangy, sweet, like pineapple or mango, none of these quite nails it. That’s one of the real pleasures of the ground cherry- tasting some completely new and unlike anything else.
Ground Cherries without their husks.
Once they are out of their husks, they range in color from very green to nearly orange-yellow. The ones you see above are pretty scrawny as we’ve had a very dry summer here. I haven’t yet figured out how to properly ripen green ground cherries. Online I read to leave them in their husks for up to a week at room temperature, but that didn’t seem to change anything.
Vegan Ground Cherry Oatmeal with Cinnamon and Cardamom
adapted from A Beautiful Mess
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon flax meal/ground flax seed
3 tablespoons water
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground cardamom (pre-ground is okay, but won’t be as flavorful)
1 cup non-dairy milk (we like cashew or coconut and have made this recipe with both)
3 tablespoons melted coconut oil
1 cup ground cherries, husks removed and rinsed
Directions:
Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine 1 tablespoon flax meal and 3 tablespoons of water in a small bowl. Mix well and set aside.
Mix dry ingredients- oats through cardamom- in a large bowl.
Mix wet ingredients- coconut oil, milk, and flax meal/water mixture- in a slightly smaller bowl.
Stir together.
Fold in ground cherries.
Evenly distribute in four ramekins. (Can also be made in a small casserole dish.)
Bake for 25-30 minutes. For a moister oatmeal, remove when still a bit bubbly. For a drier oatmeal, remove when no longer bubbling.
Allow to cool slightly. Serve.
Refrigerates well.
Vegan Ground Cherry Oatmeal with Cinnamon and Cardamom Printable
If you like this, you may also like:
Banana Oatmeal
Persimmon and Cranberry-Baked Oatmeal
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