Baked Oatmeal is like eating warm oatmeal cookies and milk for breakfast.

Baked Oatmeal is like eating warm oatmeal cookies and milk for breakfast.

Cooked oatmeal, a warm porridge with milk and a bit of sugar and raisins, maybe a dash of cinnamon, is such a good breakfast when the wind is howling outside and it is cold. Of course, I know people who eat porridge every morning of their lives as my dad did, spring, summer, fall, and winter. At our house, oatmeal is in a winter rotation of cooked breakfasts with scrambled eggs, sausage and apples, or the occasional waffles or pancakes. Last winter, just about this time, I wrote about non-mushy oatmeal, and sure enough, it struck a chord and I heard back from some of you, including a couple of intriguing recipes.

Valerie Sulya in Bucksport has developed a way to cook non-gummy instant oatmeal! She reports that she has eaten oatmeal every morning for fifty years. Her method employs a microwave and includes a lot of stuff, and I mean, it’s loaded. Here is Valerie’s recipe. “This is my daily oatmeal cereal mixture that I eat for breakfast. Everyday!”

Valerie's Daily Oatmeal
Serves: 1-2
 
Ingredients
  • 3 coffee scoops or 6 tablespoons of instant oatmeal
  • 1 tablespoon Bran Buds
  • 1 tablespoon wheat bran flakes
  • 6 ounces of water
  • 3 tablespoons homemade apple or rhubarb sauce
  • Or ⅓ cup any mixed fresh fruit
  • 1 tablespoon dry granola
  • 2 tablespoons coffee creamer or fruit puree
Instructions
  1. Put the oatmeal, dry cereals, and water into a microwaveable bowl and cook for one minute.
  2. Stir and cook for an additional 25-30 seconds.
  3. Add fruit and microwave an additional 30 seconds.
  4. Let cool and add granola, creamer or fruit puree.

 

A Baked Oatmeal recipe came recommended by Ann (whose last name and town, alas, I lost in the detritus on my desk—my apologies). She found it in a community cookbook, the Maine State Grange Cookbook; the recipe was submitted by Kathy Gray of the Nobleboro #369. It produces firm oatmeal, and if you use nuts and a little cinnamon, it’s a little like eating a warm, crumbled up oatmeal cookie for breakfast. I ate mine with a little more milk. Lovely.

Ann noted that the recipe calls for one whole cup of brown sugar, “tooooo much,” she wrote and I agree. She also added raisins and walnuts, an excellent idea. If you use instant oatmeal for this the one cup of milk might suffice. But since I am using rolled oats, I needed to add more liquid and so I used additional water, reflected in the recipe below; otherwise, it is too crumbly and the oats are a little underdone. Ann also advised merely to warm the leftovers in the microwave. Since the recipe makes a generous amount, you end up with two days worth of breakfast. I halved it and still had leftovers because there are only two of us.

Baked Oatmeal

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs, beaten

½ cup brown sugar (more to taste)

3 cups oatmeal

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup milk

1 cup water

Raisins and/or nuts

Cinnamon to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a baking dish.

Combine the oil, eggs and sugar

Stir in oatmeal, baking powder, and salt.

Mix in water and milk.

Add optional raisins, nuts, and spice.

Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Serve with milk and/or maple syrup.

Makes 6 servings.

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.