The Morning After: Baked Oatmeal

(This is a great food for everyday buzz-buzz busy life and also for holiday guests! Which is why I posted a holiday version of this recipe in a ***CONTEST*** through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Please go to this website and vote for my recipe every day!)


Got hunger? Got guests? Got a pregnant friend??? Give 'em baked oatmeal.

I've always loved oatmeal. But I don't like to cook it every day. Enter in the majestic and tasty solution: baked oatmeal. I'd never heard about baked oatmeal before last week, when my friend and fellow blogger (The Variegated Life) introduced me to the lovely food blog and site A Nourished Kitchen.

I slightly altered A Nourished Kitchen's recipe to suit my tastes in a few ways:
1) Less sugar
2) Bran flakes (for the fiber)
3) Less dried fruit, etc. (to decrease the sugar)
4) Less custard, i.e. less egg and milk mix (to decrease the cholesterol and to insure that the squares of baked oatmeal keep their form and are truly portable)

Baked Oatmeal
Grab it cold, it's good to go. Because this is so easy to make, so filling and tasty, and makes so much, it is a great recipe for the holidays when your home is full of guests. Filling and tasty. Loaded with whole grains to help get your body restarted, metabolism smoothed out, and blood sugar leveled!

Baked Oatmeal, Yogurt, Cinnamon, and Maple Syrup

5 c. organic steel cut oats
1 c. organic bran flakes
1-2 T. yogurt
1/3-1/2 c. prunes, finely chopped
4 organic, free-range eggs
1 c. organic milk
1/4 c. molasses
**for more flavor, add 1 tsp. vanilla or almond extract
**for more sweetness, add 1/2 c. more dried fruit (such as raisins) or sucanat sugar

1) Put the oats, bran flakes, and yogurt in a large container or bowl. Completely cover with water and mix to combine the yogurt throughout. Cover the container with its top, a clean dishcloth, or plastic wrap. Let sit overnight.
2) Strain in a colander. Lightly with the back of a large spoon to be sure most of the excess water drains.
3) Beat the eggs and milk together (along with the extracts or sugar, if you are using those). Stir the drained oats, chopped prunes, and molasses thoroughly into the egg and milk mix.
4) Grease a 9 x 11 glass baking dish with coconut oil or vegetable oil. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
5) Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish. Bake for 35-45 minutes, or until brown, solid yet moist. (While cooking, you might see liquid bubbling up in places. If so, the baked oatmeal is done when there is little liquid left to bubble.)
6) Allow to cool for a few minutes. This also lets the oats absorb any remaining moisture.
7) Slice into squares and serve immediately, with brown sugar, yogurt, milk or soy milk, fresh fruit, maple syrup, honey or jam!
8) Or allow to cool completely, store in the refrigerator, and eat later. Baked oatmeal can last about 1 week.

Serving Ideas
You can appeal to your guests' wide range of tastes and hankerings with this baked oatmeal, simply by putting out an assortment of simple additions and condiments. For example, baked oatmeal can be served with:
• brown sugar or sucanat,
• yogurt,
• warm milk or soy milk,
• fresh fruit,
• maple syrup,
• honey,
• jam,
• barley malt syrup,
• peanut butter or almond butter,
• agave nectar,
• sprinkling of cocoa powder or powdered sugar,
• applesauce,
and of course …
• leftover whole berry cranberry sauce!

Meaner, Greener, Leaner!
* Steel cut oats are good food. In Terry Walter's great book Clean Food, she notes how groats are the most nutritious form of oats, with steel cut oats coming in second. In other words, steel cut oats are a terrific source of vitamins and minerals.
* Nourished Kitchen says it best, I think:
"Baked oatmeal is both deeply nutritive and deeply satisfying. Steel cut oats are gently soaked overnight in water acidified by a touch of yogurt or fresh whey which helps to increase not only your body’s ability to better digest the grain, but also your body’s ability to better absorb its minerals. Oats are rich in minerals, including phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, iron and zinc, .... Moreover, oats are a rich source of B vitamins including folate – that critical nutrient which is vital to reproductive health and the proper development of babies growing within their mothers’ wombs."
* Nourished Kitchen and Terry Walters both recommend soaking oats in order to diminish the phytic acid. As Nourished Kitchen states:
".... but due to the effects of naturally occurring antinutrients found in whole grain, such as phytic acid, those minerals due your body little good unless oats are properly prepared as they are in this recipe."
But other sites dispute this. Some, such as The World's Healthiest Foods, suggest that there are low levels of phytic acid in oats, others suggest that the phytic acid in oats doesn't diminish much with soaking (as with other grains). One site, Rebuild the Blog, recommended adding a different type of grain into oats and soaking together as an aid to the breakdown of phytic acid. It is based on this advice that I chose to add the bran.
* This recipe makes a great breakfast, but it could be easily adapted to make a low-sugar, healthful desert option--an oat-y substitution to bread pudding!
Baked Chocolate and Cherry Oatmeal!
Just replace the prunes with 3/4 c. of dried chopped cherries, add 1 more c. of organic milk, add the extract and sucanat (as noted above), do not use the molasses, add 1/3 c. of fair-trade cocoa powder, and add 1/2 c. of fair-trade chocolate chunks.

Here are more pictures from the process.

Oats getting a soak!


Outta' the oven ...




And on my plate!