Baked Oatmeal

I only heard about baked oatmeal recently.  It's a great way to prepare a nice breakfast ahead of time.  It's portable, freezable, and nutritious.  You can make it sweet or savory, but breakfast versions are generally fruity.  You could even serve it as dessert with a bit of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Baked oatmeal is basically the oat version of bread pudding.  You pour an egg custard over the oats and whatever else, then bake it.  Cut the resulting casserole into bars and serve.  That's as hard as it gets.

I'm still trying to cut cholesterol when possible, so I subbed some egg white in mine and only used one yolk.  Naturally, skipping the yolks will make it less rich.  And I cut back on the sugar considerably from most recipes because I hardly use any in my daily oatmeal.  I don't put any added sugar in overnight oats other than what's in the fruit and milk.  If you follow my amounts, you might feel the need to drizzle the casserole with maple syrup when it's served, which isn't entirely a bad thing.

Side note, the bins are back at Sprouts!  For most of the pandemic, you could only buy pre-portioned bags of their bulk items.  Still the bulk price, but you were stuck getting however much it was packaged as.  The whole point of the bins for me is getting only what I need for a single recipe, or maybe the month.  Bulk spices and teas were pulled entirely.  That was when I switched to the local Tampico brand.  It isn't inferior at all, but they don't carry a huge variety.  It's just cheaper, which was a big part of buying bulk spices and only getting the few tablespoons I wanted in the spice rack at once.  Long story short (too late), I'm thrilled to be able to choose how much oatmeal to buy at a shot.

*2/3 C pecans, chopped
2 C rolled oats
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1-3/4 C milk
*1/4 C maple syrup
*2 eggs
2 Tb butter, oil, or coconut oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 C fresh, dried, or canned fruit, bite-sized

1.  Preheat oven to 375º.  Toast nuts, either in a dry pan or on a cookie sheet in the oven for a minute or two.  Set aside to cool.  Grease one 9"x9" pan or two standard loaf pans with the first tablespoon of fat.  Melt the rest for step 3.

2.  In a medium bowl, stir together oats, nuts, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg.

3.  In a small bowl, whisk together milk, maple syrup, eggs, and melted butter.

4.  Arrange 3/4 of the fruit on the bottom of the baking dish.  I opened a jar of grapes in syrup and cut up a couple of bananas.  Top with the oat mixture and spread it out evenly.

5.  Pour wet mixture over the oats and allow it to sink in, about 5 minutes.  Do not do this step the day before, or the oats will absorb everything and not bake properly.  Scatter remaining fruit on the top.

The chunks are coconut oil

6.  Bake 40-45 minutes, until custard is set.  Allow to cool, about 20 minutes, then cut into bars for serving or storing.

Serves 8

Difficulty rating  π