Open Source Cook

sudo make dinner.

Baked Oatmeal Muffins

With Simon’s wheat allergy, breakfast options have been a little limited in the household.  I mean, without wheat and eggs, there’s not too much you can do.  Well, at least not what I currently know, so I’ve been on the lookout for more breakfast ideas.  All the boys love oatmeal, but when you tend to wake up 15 minutes before you need to be out of the house, it’s a little hard to make it in the mornings.  So when I came across Suger-Free Mom’s Personal Sized Baked Oatmeal recipe I knew I had to try it.

With all new recipes, I pretty much went by the recipe as it originally was, however I did make a few changes.  The main one being the use of Stevia.  I don’t have that in stock and I’m not afraid of using sugar, so I substituted the 6 packets of Sweetleaf Stevia for the equivalent of 4 tbsp sugar.  I also, now that I have read the recipe again, added a bit more banana.  For some reason I thought it said 1 cup mashed, not 1 banana, so that’s another change.  This may explain why the oatmeal muffins came out a little softer than I thought they should’ve been. *grin*

Other than that, I kept everything pretty much the same.  If you can’t find flaxseed meal, you can also just get the flaxseed and then grind them up yourself.  That’s what I did since I couldn’t find the meal and didn’t want to try and hunt it down.

Overall, I have to say that I love this recipe.  I have never used flaxseed before and was a little leery of it, but I have to say that it was fine.  I’m not sure what it’s suppose to taste like, and since I don’t know I can’t taste it.  So I’m all good.  Due to my slight error with the bananas, the muffins did come out a little softer than I thought they would, but they did firm up the longer I allowed them to cool.  I’m thinking once I start pulling them out of the freezer (because the recipe makes 2.5 dozen muffins), they’ll be perfect for the boys to munch on.

The other beautiful part about this recipe is you can add whatever toppings you want to it.  I have a house full of chocoholics, so I added a couple of chocolate chips to the top and it added just enough sweetness to be perfect.  Since they are muffins, you don’t have to do all 2.5 dozen with chocolate; you can do a couple with raisins or fruit or leave it plain.  This leaves a lot of possibilities open, and in my opinion, means it’ll be very easy to play with.  I’ve already started a new batch with a few changes that I’m really hoping will work.

One last thing, this batter ends up being really soggy and wet and I ended up with some pretty soft muffins.  When you think of muffins, you want to just be able to peel the wrapper off and go to town.  You can do that with these, but they are a little messy as they fall apart easily.  Again, they are firming up as they cool off, so we’ll see if this remains true in the morning; but if you’re looking to make them a little firmer straight from the oven (and thus can eat them like muffins), I would cut back a little on all the liquid.  I haven’t tried it yet, and I think I’m going to, so don’t quote me on that.  If anyone does do it, I would love to know how it turns out.

Updated 4/10/12: I’ve found that adding an extra cup of oatmeal firms up the muffins beautifully.  It doesn’t make them dry at all and I don’t end up with them falling apart when I try to take the wrappers off of them.  In fact, I’m adjusting the recipe below to reflect this.  So if you want the original amount of oatmeal for this recipe, it’s 5 cups.  The 6 cups is to make them more firmer.

_Updated _7/23/12: Oh! I’m making another change….protein! Since I’m getting on an “eating clean” and protein diet to help the weight loss, I’m adding 3 scoops of a protein powder.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup egg beaters
2 cups applesauce, unsweetened
1 tsp vanilla extract
3-4 mashed bananas
4 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup ground up flaxseed
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
6 cups old fashioned oatmeal
2 3/4 cups milk
2 scoops of Body Fortress – Super Advanced Whey Protein

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Mix eggs, vanilla, applesauce, banana and Stevia together in a bowl.
  3. Add in oats, salt, baking powder, flaxseed, protein powder and cinnamon – mix well with wet ingredients.
  4. Finally pour in milk and combine.
  5. Spray a 12 and 6 capacity muffin tin with cooking spray or use cupcake liners.
  6. Pour mixture evenly into muffin tin cups.
  7. If using toppings add them onto the tops of muffins now. If using fresh or frozen fruit, drop it right into the batter.
  8. Bake 30 minutes until a toothpick in center comes out clean. Cool and enjoy or freeze them in gallon freezer bags.

Nutritional Information: Serving 36 muffins; Calories 97; Carbs 14g; Fat 2g; Protein 5g (as determined by MyFitnessPal.com)

Variation: Baked Oatmeal Zucchini