Tender Baked Oatmeal Cups
These baked oatmeal cups are not your average oat muffin. Nope, crack into the thin, crispy exterior of these muffin pan masterpieces and you’ll find a moist, creamy interior brimming with breakfast-friendly sweetness and warm spices. One taste and you’ll wonder where these hearty, portable breakfast bites have been all your life.
Tender baked oatmeal cups are all about taking the things we love most about baked oatmeal, customizing it for every eater in your kitchen, and turning it into a grab-and-go breakfast or snack. This recipe is pretty basic and easily adaptable, so I bet you have everything you need to make them in your kitchen right now. While you’re checking, preheat the oven — you are going to want to bake these ASAP.
Baked oatmeal cups are essentially a hearty oat muffin, so you’ll see that the recipe below is mixed via the muffin method: Wet ingredient and dry ingredients are mixed together in separate bowls before they’re combined. Baked oatmeal cups get their sweetness from a combination of applesauce and maple syrup, but you can easily swap the applesauce for another fruit purée — try mashed bananas, canned pumpkin purée, or even one of your kid’s vegetable squeeze pouches. The same goes for sweeteners — maple syrup can be replaced with honey, or you can use a few tablespoons of brown sugar instead.
Ingredients:
- Cooking spray
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups milk (any kind)
- 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce (or other fruit purée, such as mashed banana or canned pumpkin)
- 1/4 cup nut butter or 2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter or coconut oil
- 1/4 cup maple syrup or honey, or 3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 cups old-fashioned oats
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
- 1/2 cup chopped nuts, pumpkin or sunflower seeds, coconut flakes, or chocolate chips (optional)
- 1/2 cup raisins or other chopped dried fruit (optional)