Tag Archives: overnight

Spiced Plum Overnight Oatmeal

My pear obsession has officially moved on to a plum obsession. Plums are great. They’re smaller than pears and apples, which makes them perfect for snacking. I despise when I eat an apple for a mid-morning snack and it stuffs me so much that I can’t enjoy my lunch! Switching to the humble plum has cured this dilemma.

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In oatmeal, plums taste quite similar to apples. However, plums don’t brown like apples do, so they are much better suited for overnight recipes! To continue the resemblance to apples, I used classic apple pie spices to complement the plums. As you can see from the picture, I topped the final product with granola!
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Chocolate Banana Overnight Oatmeal

I took one of my laziest recipes and made it even lazier! Dirtying a saucepan can be just so tedious. Now you can carelessly toss the ingredients in a jar, shake it up, and wake up to chocolaty oatmeal at 5:30!

Except you probably don’t have to get up that early. Good for you.

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I intentionally designed this recipe to be flexible. If you want, you can create this with four ingredients: oats, chocolate milk, banana, and a pinch of salt. However, it doesn’t have to stop there.
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Grapefruit Overnight Oatmeal

I’m still disappointed that my Grapefruit-Coconut Oatmeal recipe isn’t more popular. How many glittering reviews do I have to give it before people try it out? What I love about it most is that the oatmeal and coconut milk mellow out the bite of the grapefruit, leaving you with just the sweet, citrusy flavor of the grapefruit. No bitterness! The only thing I don’t like about it is the prep work; segmenting grapefruits is such a bother.

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Well, here’s a way to save some time. You can do the prep work the night before, and you’ll be able to wake up to delicious grapefruit oatmeal in the morning without dirtying a knife!
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Black Forest Cake Overnight Oatmeal

You all said to me that you wanted more overnight oatmeal recipes, and this is one that will start your day right. I mean, what could be better than waking up to a BLACK FOREST CAKE!?

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This recipe was a tough cookie to crack. Much to my disappointment, cherries are not the most flavorful ingredient, especially in its whole form. Their flavor is locked in within that fragile skin.

The first time I made it, I dropped the berries in whole. In the morning, the oatmeal was very flavorless and did not taste at all like a Black Forest Cake. Then, I tried something a little different:  I blended the cherries first, so the oatmeal soaked up “cherry juice,” which gave it much more flavor.
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Overnight Tea-Steeped Oatmeal

Coffee or tea?

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Six years ago, I would have responded, “Neither.” I started drinking tea toward the final months of my senior year of high school as a way to calm my ever-tormented digestive system. I wasn’t crazy about it at first, but I learned to tolerate it. Now, I drink a glass of tea almost every day. (I’ve also learned to like coffee, too, but that’s beside the point.)

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Tip: Responding to Oatmeal Emergencies!

I’ll be the first to describe oatmeal as foolproof. That doesn’t mean that you can’t make mistakes; instead, it means that it’s exceptionally easy to fix the mistakes! Overcooked? Easy fix. Soupy oatmeal (like the picture below)? Easy fix. Poor flavor? Easy fix.

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Here are some common problems I’ve encountered, and the easy ways to respond to them:

1. You overcooked the oatmeal, and now it’s all dry and clumpy. This is absolutely my most common error, and it’s easy to make! Luckily, it’s also easy to fix. Remove from heat, add more liquid (OR yogurt), and stir. The oatmeal will probably not reach the perfect consistency you were originally going for, but it should regain most of its creamy charm!

2. For some reason unknown to man, your oatmeal looks more like soupy oats. You’ve let it simmer for way over five minutes, but the liquid just isn’t going anywhere, and the oats are starting to look overcooked. No worries; I’ve been there. Dozens of times. There are a few options. First of all, if there’s a LOT of liquid left, consider carefully removing some of the extra liquid using a spoon. Second, you could add a spoonful or two of oat flour, which you can either buy in a store or make yourself by grinding up your regular oats. This will thicken up your oatmeal without having to be cooked for a long time. The other option, and my personal favorite, is to simply remove the oatmeal from heat and let it sit for a few minutes. Amazingly, it just thickens up on its own.

If, however, you have made refrigerator oatmeal, and the porridge that greets you in the morning is essentially a lake of liquid, this is also an easy fix. Pour the oatmeal into a bowl and microwave for 1-2 minutes. It will have to suck up the extra liquid as it cooks! I intentionally add extra liquid when I make refrigerator oatmeal because I know it will be the perfect consistency after being microwaved.

3. You poured your heart into making a baked oatmeal recipe, waited twenty minutes, and taken your first bite, only to discover that it has the flavor profile of a rice cake. The easy thing about stove-top oatmeal is that you can taste-and-go, constantly adjusting the flavors until it’s perfect. With baked oatmeal, you have to put faith into your judgment and hope it turns out alright. Most of the time, it does. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn’t. If you find yourself with a bland baked oatmeal, don’t despair; just dress it up with toppings. If you didn’t season the batter enough, sprinkle on some cinnamon or nutmeg as a topping! If it didn’t turn out as sweet as you would have liked, drizzle on some maple syrup or honey. If it’s just plain dull, smear on some peanut butter or throw some chocolate chips on top. Another great option is to add fruit, which packs a huge flavor punch, particularly strawberries and bananas.

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4. You accidentally dumped half a container of cinnamon into the saucepan instead of the suggested 1/4 teaspoon. Ah yes, you had great intentions. You’ve become a confident master of the oats, and you freely toss in the ingredients without measuring them. But then, with your preferred curse words, you mistakenly dump an entire mountain of cinnamon into your cooking oats. Rest easy, fellow porridge lovers, you’re not alone! I’ve been there. There are two options. First of all, you can immediately spoon out the load of undesired spices. You probably won’t be able to salvage it, unfortunately, but at least you can save your oatmeal from being tragically overspiced! Second (and this may just create a bigger mess), you could attempt to double (or triple) the rest of the recipe by adding more liquid and oats so that the heavy dose of cinnamon is proportionate to the rest of the recipe. You could then either share your oatmeal or store the leftovers in the fridge for another day.

5. You started boiling the liquid, and you measure out the oats, only to discover that you don’t have enough to create a full serving. Oops! Before you panic, check your pantry. You may have other grains–like rice, quinoa, buckwheat, or millet–that you could use. The cooking times will probably be different, but it won’t be too hard to adjust. As you can see from my Oat-Quinoa Porridge, mixing grains can create a very desirable breakfast! If you don’t have any of those on hand, try removing a bit of the liquid (set it aside for later so you don’t have to waste it; you could use it as a topping if you like adding milk at the end). Then, compensate for the smaller serving by adding lots of mix-ins, like bananas, yogurt, peanut butter, granola, dried fruit, etc. For more ideas, check out my Loaded Banana Oatmeal post.

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There’s one flub that I cannot fix, unfortunately. If you dump cumin into your Apple Pie Oatmeal instead of nutmeg…well…just throw it away. It’s a lost cause. Ahem, not that that’s ever happened to me or anything…


Eggnog Oatmeal

Sadly, my family was never an eggnog family. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I asked my mom what it was, so she bought me a carton of the store-bought variety so I could try it. I’ll admit now that most of it ended up being poured down the sink two weeks later (i.e. I was unimpressed). I’ve never had homemade eggnog, but it’s never been high on my priority list for foods to try, either.

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Now that I avoid dairy, I have even less desire to try the real stuff. However, I was exceptionally curious to try the dairy-free varieties after reading some reviews. I saw the rice ‘nog appear in Whole Foods even before Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t until a week ago that I finally captured the coconut ‘nog! As soon as I spotted it on an obscure refrigerated shelf in the corner of the store, I snatched a jug up in less time than it takes for my roommate to complain whenever we play Christmas music. 😉
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Cookie Dough Overnight Oatmeal

Edit: I have new pictures!! I remade this recipe this weekend, and I snapped some better shots for the blog. Enjoy!

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Another lazy blog week. And I promised myself I’d be better in December! The sad thing is, I actually had recipes I could have posted. In my defense, they were terrible pictures that I wasn’t desperate enough to publish. Seriously. You try taking good photographs at 5:30 am.
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How to Make Any Stove-Top Recipe in the Refrigerator

Remember eight months ago when I got a kidney stone? Yeah, well, it happened again. I won’t bore you with the details, but the pain was awful enough that I couldn’t bother to work on a new post yesterday/today.

I did, however, manage to come up with something. If you haven’t noticed, the baked oatmeal recipes have been much rarer lately. That is because I’ve been making refrigerator oatmeal instead, which essentially allows me to enjoy stove-top oatmeal without waiting for the oatmeal to cook on the stove!

It also occurred to me that I’ve been taking all my favorite recipes and just making them in the fridge. I figured instead of posting each of them as overnight recipes, I would just post a how-to for how to take ANY of my stove-top recipes and convert them to an overnight masterpiece.
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French Toast Overnight Oatmeal

There are some recipes that take me forever to get right. Then, there are others that turn out exactly as I had imagined on the first try (like my Carrot Cake Oatmeal and Peanut Butter Cookie Baked Oatmeal).

Add this one to the list!

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Admittedly, I spent a while mentally concocting this one, but after I bought some pitted dates, it all came together. This is the first time I’ve used dates in a recipe (let alone oatmeal), and I must say, I’m impressed! Letting it soak with the oatmeal overnight softened it up and let the oatmeal absorb the sweetness. It was the perfect amount of sweetness, especially when I added a touch of maple syrup on top.
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