This is a great thing to keep around for an easy and healthy, on-the-go breakfast. It tastes like a cross between an oatmeal cookie and a bowl of oatmeal! And it's like so many of my favorite recipes in that you can change it up in so many different ways depending on what you have in your pantry at the time! So here's the basic recipe -
2 cups oats
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 tsp honey (or maple syrup or whatever sweetener you want. Or you can leave this out completely!)
1 cup applesauce or a smashed banana or two (I used banana because I was out of applesauce.)
1 cup milk, creamer, juice, or water (I used milk.)
pinch of salt
handful of chocolate chips
2 tbsp of some type of oil, butter or nut butter (I used coconut oil this time.)
cinnamon (as much or as little as you like)
Mix all ingredients and scoop into a muffin tin. I made a dozen out of this recipe. Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes or until they start to get brown and crispy! I intended on saving most of them for future breakfasts, but only one has made it through the day (and I'll probably eat that before the kids get up in the morning)!!!
For my first run of this, that's the recipe I used. I'm planning to make several different versions similar to prepackaged oatmeal. Such as Apple Cinnamon (leaving out the chocolate), Brown Sugar and Cinnamon, Cinnamon Raisin, Strawberry (using juice instead of milk and adding in some dried strawberries), etc. I'm also going to go for a Chocolate Peanut Butter, because really, what could be better than that?!?!
Also, when they came straight of oven, we topped them with some vanilla yogurt and they were super yummy that way.
