Oatmeal Tea Bread redux: An Adventure In Toasted Walnuts

I have a confession to make: I have never toasted nuts before.

I generally don’t cook with nuts, either, and part of that is my own texture preference. I like nuts, but I don’t love biting into something crunchy and resistant in the middle of something nice and cakey. I don’t usually bake with chocolate chunks for the same reason. But I will also admit that I have read, many times, that to bake with nuts successfully you have to toast them first, and for some reason, I found the idea of toasting them just intimidating enough to discourage me.

Of course I used to feel that way about zesting, and now I am a zester extraordinaire. So when Linus requested something with nuts in it, I rose to the challenge, which turned out to be not much of a challenge after all, and quite rewarding.

I asked if she wanted brownies, cookies, bars, muffins, what? She said, “Um…can you make that oatmeal tea bread again and put them in there?” Well I’m a sucker for a compliment too, and I love that oatmeal tea bread, so I readily agreed.

Step one: Go to the store, buy everything you came for except the walnuts. Leave the store. Turn around and go back in. Sheepishly purchase chopped walnuts. Head home.

Step two: Spread walnuts on a cookie sheet.

Step two: Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Step three: Put tray of walnuts into the oven. Poke them with a wooden spoon every few minutes.

Step four: After about ten minutes, sniff. Does it smell like lovely toasted walnuts? Yes? Remove.

Now I had toasted walnuts. Then all I had to do was make the oatmeal tea bread. It all went well until I ran out of applesauce, so I supplemented with vanilla yogurt.

Here’s the batter, pre-walnuts.