Baked Oatmeal

In an earlier blog post, the subject of baked oatmeal came up. My two friends Sarah recommended it to me, I obtained the recipe, and tried it this morning, calling it Oatmeal Cake for John's benefit. It's got to be incredibly healthy and I think it would make fantastic food for growing babies (rice cereal or any of those ground up grain cereals are so useless!). I used steel cut oats instead of rolled (the same calories, fat, fiber, and protein in half the quantity of steel cut as rolled oats, so double the nutrition? not sure.).

My very own son actually ate oats, whole yogurt, and eggs without throwing up. Now, he did stop after eating half a piece of "cake," and then declared that he didn't like it and would rather wait till lunch to eat anything more. But the fact that he didn't throw up and he ate half of it just fine tells me that I can work on this one by serving it repeatedly. I didn't think it was as satisfying as my typical empty bread toasted to perfection and dripping with butter either, but I know it was way more nutritionally dense!

You'll note that this recipe comes from "Nourishing Traditions," yet I am not espousing the ideas of the Weston-Price folks, whom I affectionately call the Pod People.

BAKED OATMEAL
(as written out by my friend Sarah W., with my comments interspersed)

2.5 C oats

1 ¾ C buttermilk/ kefir / yogurt OR non-dairy milk with 2 T raw apple cider vinegar to equal 1 ¾ C (if you want to “soak” the oats a la "Nourishing Traditions"-type ideas. But if you don’t care about that, just use any 1 ¾ C liquid basically. I would still let it soak overnight though so that the oats absorb the moisture.) [Katherine's note: I used plain whole yogurt and I soaked for almost 24 hours.]

Combine the above in a large mixing bowl and let sit at room temperature, covered, for 12-24 hours. The next day, preheat the oven to 350. Use another large mixing bowl, or even better, just plop the soaked oats in the baking dish (9x13") I am going to use while I mix everything else up in the same bowl I already used so I don’t dirty an extra dish. The baking dish does not need to be greased.

Beat with a wire whisk:
4 eggs

Then whisk in:

½ C coconut oil (recommended, but you could sub another kind of oil or melted butter.) [Katherine's note: the grocery store I visited yesterday didn't carry coconut oil, so I used melted butter.]

½ C (or less) honey, or maple syrup or sweetener of your choice. (If you measure the oil first, then measure the honey in the same measuring cup, it will slide right out.) [Katherine's note: I used honey.]

Whisk that all together and mix in:

1 t baking powder
½ t salt
2 t cinnamon
2 t vanilla
2 T ground flax seeds (optional) (or maybe some other sneaky healthy stuff !) [Katherine's note: Some time ago, I found a giant bag of ground golden flax seeds at Costo. It is so great for sneaking in food because the golden color disappears in baked goods, versus black flax seeds.]

Then plop the oats back in your mixing bowl and stir everything up so that it is well amalgamated.

Finally mix in:

~2 C raisins or Craisins (I just do about 4 fist fulls from a bulk sized bag, I think I decided a full 2 C was slightly too much) [Katherine's note: I used black raisins, but only in half my batter because I knew John wouldn't want raisins. First I poured half the stiff batter into the baking dish, mixed raisins into the other half, and poured it into the other side of the baking dish.]

~2 C chopped apples or pears (one large apple or two small ones) [Katherine's note: I skipped any fruit because I knew it would elicit a big "no" from John. If I get John to like this "cake," I might then try adding some homemade apple sauce (essentially just boiled, mashed apples with no sugar added), which he would taste but would not sense its texture.]

Stir that all together, then pour it in your baking dish and bake at 350 for 35 min, until it is starting to brown around the edges. Let cool and enjoy!

I think this could be served for dessert as well as breakfast. You can eat it as is, but I think it goes great with some plain yogurt. I find that the baked oatmeal is sweet enough to offset the plain yogurt, but of course any type of yogurt that folks like will work. For my one-year-old son, I usually chop it up with a spoon and mix the yogurt all in it, as I think it is a little easier for him when I prepare it that way, and then you definitely wouldn’t taste any plain, tart yogurt by itself. This keeps in the fridge for a long time (weeks). I just reheat our portions in the toaster oven and we probably have it for breakfast at least half the time. I’m so thankful on busy mornings when I don’t have to “make” something!