Baked oatmeal cups

December 31, 2019 at 1:10 pm (breakfast, B_(3 stars, like), Grains, Website / blog) (preschooler-approved)

I was looking around for more make-ahead breakfast ideas, and decided to try to make baked oatmeal cups. Alma hasn’t been very into oatmeal lately, so I thought this might be a good way to make it more exciting. I searched for a recipe and I first came across this recipe for tender baked oatmeal cups on thekitchn.com., which I had bookmarked a long time ago. But Google says it only gets a rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars (from 482 voters!) So I kept looking. I found this recipe from Tasty.co, which gets more than 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 281 voters). But when I looked at that recipe, it looked surprisingly similar to the kitchen.com recipe. I compared them side by side, and they are almost identical! Funny. One advantage of the Tasty.co recipe is that is has weight measurements, which I prefer for measuring sticky ingredients. But I had already pulled up thekitchn.com recipe, so Alma and I followed that one. We used peanut butter for the nut butter, honey for the sweetener, raisins for the dried fruit, and almonds for the nuts. I didn’t have any plain applesauce so we used apple apricot sauce. We mixed the nuts and raisins into the batter instead of sprinkling the toppings on top, because I was afraid that they would burn. The muffins still looked quite wet at 25 minutes, so I ended up baking them for the full 30 minutes.

The recipe worked pretty well. The oatmeal cups didn’t hold together quite as well as the ones in the videos, and they stuck a bit to the tins despite me greasing them (with olive oil, I didn’t have any spray). I think I might have added a tad too much honey, and also my eggs were larger than American eggs. So the batter might have been a little bit too wet.

Alma said she loved the recipe (4 stars), but she did pick out all the raisins (which is ironic, since yesterday she just ate the raisins out of her Tassajara red cabbage). Derek and I thought the muffins were okay. The internal texture was a lot like the oatmeal Derek makes out of rolled oats, but the tops were a bit crisper. I found them a bit too sweet. I think if I make them again I will double the walnuts and cut out the raisins. And measure the honey by weight instead of by tablespoons (which wasn’t so precise I fear). I also think they’d be better with a different nut butter. Maybe peanut butter would go well with banana puree, but with applesauce they’d probably go better with almond butter or maybe sun butter (for a cheaper option).

We ate 6 of the muffins for brunch today, and have 6 left for another day.

Ingredients:

• 2 large eggs (100g out of shells)
• 1 ½ cups milk (360 mL)
• ½ cup applesauce (125g)
• ¼ cup sunflower butter (60g), or nut butter of choice
• ¼ cup maple syrup (55g)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups old fashioned rolled oats (300g)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ½ teaspoon fine salt
• 1 cup of toppings of your chocie, like chopped nuts, pumpkin or sunflower seeds, coconut flakes, chocolate chips, raisins, dried apricots or cherries or cranberreis, frozen blueberries, sliced bananas, …

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.
2. Place milk, applesauce, nut butter, maple syrup, vanilla, and eggs in a medium-sized bowl. Whisk until combined.
3. Add oats, baking powder, cinnamon, walnuts, and salt. Stir quickly to make sure everything is well-hydrated.
4. Pour heaping 1/4 cup batter into each well of the greased muffin tin, and add toppings of your choice. Bake for 20–25 minutes or until the middle springs back when gently pressed.
5. Oatmeal cups can be enjoyed immediately and/or frozen in an airtight container (once completely cool) to be enjoyed later by microwaving for 2 minutes.

There are other variants online as well, like these six variations. The orange cranberry version sounds yummy to me, as does the carrot cake one. Lemon poppyseed sounds intriguing. That page also suggests adding in 1 to 2 Tbs. ground flax seed, chia seeds, hemp hearts, or protein powder.

Update April 2021:

On a second attempt I used soymilk for the milk and hazelnut butter for the nut butter, forgot the cinnamon, and left out the walnuts. The oatmeal cups (or “muffins” as Alma called them) turned out reasonably good. Again they reminded me of Derek’s oatmeal he makes from rolled oats, just with toppings and a crispy crust on top.

For toppings we tried a number of combinations. My favorite toppings were the pecans. I loved the flavor they added. Alma loved the muffins topped with shredded coconut and mini chocolate chips. We topped a few with chopped up dried apricots and the apricots tasted intensely apricot-y, like fresh apricots. The frozen blueberries and raisins were both fine but unexciting.

The texture of the top is better than the middle of these muffins. I think if you have one of those muffin top pans that would work great, or maybe we should just make mini muffins. Derek said they could use a bit more salt.