December 3, 2020
This vegan maple brown sugar oatmeal bake is a wonderfully cozy, make-ahead breakfast for wintertime.
With winter approaching, I’m in the mood for oatmeal. This year, I’m also in the mood for recipes that I can make ahead and enjoy as the week goes by. Maple brown sugar baked oatmeal is it.
This recipe is sweet, comforting, and cozy. It’s a good thing to make on Sunday and then roll out for breakfast on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. It requires very little work, and you can enjoy the leftovers warm or cold.
The versatility of baked oatmeal
In fact, that’s what I love best about baked oatmeal: the versatility of leftovers. I’ve eaten baked oatmeal squares cold, sort of like a portable breakfast bar.
I also like to reheat them in the oven and drizzle them with maple syrup before I enjoy them.
And, when I have the time, I enjoy reheating them, mashing them up a little in a bowl, and topping them with warm plant milk.
Oatmeal bakes are versatile in terms of ingredients, too. This maple brown sugar baked oatmeal is a wintery version, good for the time of year when fresh fruit is hard to come by.
But I’ve made so many different seasonal varieties! Peach oatmeal (baked in a skillet) in the summer, blueberry and walnut year-round (using frozen berries as needed), pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip in the fall.
I love that oatmeal bakes are basically a dump-and-bake kind of recipe—hands off, easy to make while you’re doing other stuff at home. And I love that they can be frozen for future easy breakfasts, too.
Elements of baked oatmeal
The formula for maple brown sugar baked oatmeal—and really all baked oatmeal varieties—isn’t so different than regular oatmeal.
You’ll need some sort of plant-milk. I usually use soy milk for the added protein, but oat milk, almond milk, and cashew milk are all fine. In a pinch, you can use water instead.
I always add some sort of sweetener to my baked oatmeal. In this recipe, it’s a combination of maple syrup—which lends its unmistakable flavor to the recipe—and brown sugar on top.
Why two sweeteners? Maple syrup is for taste, and brown sugar is for a slightly caramelized top. There’s a bit of cinnamon in the recipe, too, but you could add a pinch of ginger or chai spice if you wanted to.
A lot of non-vegan baked oatmeal recipes call for eggs. I’ve never found replacing eggs to be a problem. I simply use ground flax meal (you’ll see that in this recipe) and a little baking powder for fluffiness.
As far as baked oatmeal goes, this is one of the more pared-down versions I’ve tried. I wanted the maple flavor to shine through.
Also, I was hoping for it to be a vehicle for any extra flourishes that I might be craving. Baked oatmeal is lovely with some nut butter, a sprinkle of hemp seeds, fresh banana or apple slices, or gingered blueberry sauce.
Why One Degree Organic rolled oats are my #1
Of course, the star of the recipe is the rolled oatmeal. And I used my go-to sprouted rolled oats, made by One Degree Organic foods.
I love One Degree products for a lot of reasons. Firstly, transparency. One Degree products have scannable QR codes that take consumers to online information about the farmers who grew each ingredient.
Additionally, One Degree ingredients are grown using plant-based cultivation methods. They’re organic, as the name implies. The grains, legumes, and seeds are also sprouted, so that their nutrients have a little extra bioavailability.
Finally, One Degree rolled oats are one of the few on the market that are free of glyphosate. Glyphosate is an active ingredient in certain herbicides that some consumers are increasingly choosing to avoid.
Most of all, I love One Degree oats because they’re always fresh. They have a faintly sweet and nutty taste, and they come in the rolled oat form (my favorite) and a convenient quick oat form.
Making & storing maple brown sugar baked oatmeal
Making this recipe couldn’t be simpler. Just mix the ingredients, pour them into a baking dish, bake, slice, enjoy. Nothing fancy or complicated.
Once the oatmeal is baked, it can be stored in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four more days. You can also freeze it for up to six weeks!
I’m getting excited for holiday cooking. But, with all of that to do, I’d like to keep my breakfasts simple and nourishing. This maple brown sugar baked oatmeal will allow me to do just that.
You can find the whole recipe on the One Degree Organic website now.
Hope you’ll enjoy it, and I’ll see you back here on Sunday.
xo
This post is sponsored by One Degree Organics. All opinions are my own. Thanks for your support!
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I happened upon your site when looking for blended salad ideas, and was happy to find this less traditional take on oats for breakfast.
Would you beileve I also happened to pick up a bag of these sprouted oats a few weeks ago? Imagine my delight to see sprouted, rolled oats; so nourishing, and convenient! We are big oat fans in this house, and we eat them many times each week. Unfortunately upon cooking these oats, I could smell some sort of “off” oil in them (I have a super smeller). I believe it is soy oil (probably the least expensive oil available, which I happen to be very sensitive to—thus the superhuman ability to detect), which is never listed as an ingredient when added as a “lubircant” to facilitate processing…I don’t know the particulars, but I am certian of what I smell. Unfortunately this, my first experience with “one degree,” “farmers we know,” has not been impressive. I hope In the future this company regulates processing of the grain as closely as they regulate sourcing.