Gluten-free baked oatmeal

Let me tell you about my new favourite breakfast. It's delicious, easy to make, has lots of fruits, and is a nice warm comfort food as the days are getting colder and shorter. We had this two times this weekend because it's just really delicious, and I wanted to share with you all this recipe. Meet my gluten-free baked oatmeal:

fresh out of the oven, gluten-free baked oatmeal.

I know it doesn't necessarily look pretty or sexy or anything like that, but sometimes, things are delicious and moist and so unforgettable that a picture just doesn't do it justice. I did try to make it look somewhat presentable, but the thing with baked items that are in a dish, it just doesn't turn out the way you want it to. 

These are all the main ingredients you need! Amazing!

Life has been a little intense for me this year, so I apologize for the lack of posts. I hope to start doing some more soon since I've been experimenting with dishes lately. This dish in particular requires so few ingredients, it doesn't take me more than 10 minutes to whip this dish up. All the ingredients that you need are in this picture above. Look at that. You can even eliminate the banana if you'd like, making it only be 8 ingredients. When was the last time you did baking and only needed 8 ingredients?



All the dry ingredients.

What's nice about this dish is that I choose to only use one bowl. You put the dry ingredients first and mix them up, and then once that's done and you've added the dry ingredients to the baking dish, you can use the same bowl for the wet ingredients. It lessens the amount of dishes to clean, and it is also just easy. I am all about easy recipes these days, especially with the cold weather--I tend to want to hybernate and do less now that it's winter time.

dry ingredients on the bottom and topped with frozen fruit

Berries are not really in season, and even if they were, I would still use frozen berries for this dish. Because they are hard, it allows for the (kind of) long cook time without them exploding or burning. Of course when you cook berries, you for sure want there to be some juicy explosions, but I also enjoy seeing the actual fruit and being able to bite into it, instead of it all being just a jellied mess. 

Wet ingredients all whisked together

I added butter to mine, to add a bit of a richer, creamy flavour. You can add vegan butter if you can't eat real butter, or you could not use any at all, and get the same delicious results. The first time I made this was for a mindful meditation brunch, and we had a lot of people who were lactose intolerant, so I opted to not use any sort of butter or butter replacement and it was all gobbled up.

The final step: pouring wet ingredients onto dry

Besides that this dish is ridiculously delicious, I like how it all comes together and is very changeable. You could add any sort of fruit you want, you can add coconut, dry fruit, nuts, use different types of milk, add chocolate... the options are endless to add twists to this recipe. My partner and I have been enjoying it the same way since I made it the first time (with the addition of butter), and I actually prefer to not have the banana, so I will probably not use bananas unless they are really ripe (we had just bought some bananas and they still had some green on them, and I personally like my bananas to be a bit ripe).

Fresh out of the oven

It isn't the most photogenic thing I've ever made, but don't let that stop you. As I've been baking and cooking, some of the best recipes I've made have looked quite... questionable. However, I also try to have a good attitude and that lovin' feeling when I make food--I think it helps. I think people can taste a difference in food when you know it's being cooked with a good attitude and good feelings. I have also learned that when I am in a bitter mood, my food usually is of lesser quality.

A quick show before it's all consumed.

This will most likely become a weekend regular at my house It does take about 40 minutes to bake, but the aroma that comes from the oven while this is baking is heavenly. This is a great dish to have for brunch or to just have. I've been finding real comfort in oatmeal lately (having it for breakfast every day with raisins, butter, and a wee bit of maple syrup), and this is a nice way to shake up my oatmeal breakfast after eating it the same way for 5 days.  I hope you enjoy this as much as we do in my house!

Ingredients:

2 c. Gluten-free oats

.5 c. Brown sugar

1 tbs. cinnamon

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 c. Milk of your choosing

1 egg

1 tbs. vanilla extract

3 tbs. butter, melted (or vegan butter)

1 package frozen fruit (I used mixed berry for variety)

1 banana (optional)

Preheat oven to 375. Spray or oil a baking dish. I used both a 9x12 and a 9x7 and I prefer the smaller one--makes the food thicker and not so thin and spread out. It also bakes a bit better.

In a medium mixing bowl, add oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Whisk thoroughly. Add this mixture to your prepared pan.

In the same bowl (I am all about using as few dishes as possible), mix together the milk, egg, vanilla, and butter. Make sure to whisk this really well to get the egg nicely incorporated into the mixture.

Put the frozen fruit on top of the oat mixture in pan, and slice the banana if using and add to this mix.

Pour the wet ingredients over the oats in an evenly fashion to make sure everything is nicely coated. Let it sit for about 30 seconds to let the wet ingredients seep into the oats.

Bake for 40 minutes and enjoy! This is a huge hit and doesn't last long.