Audrey’s Kitchen: Delicious (and Sneaky-Healthy) Breakfast Oat Bake

I admit it.  Sometimes a healthy, home-cooked breakfast feels impossible for me.  I am not a morning person, but my 2 year old definitely is.  There are many mornings her first words to me are “I eat”!  Since I’m still classified as comatose until I’ve had coffee, I then rummage through our cabinets searching a fruit bar.  Not some of my proudest nutritional moments, but I’m a real mom with a real kid.  So this got me thinking.  What about a bake I could make in advance?  Then I could scoop some of it onto a plate, zap it in the microwave, and all will be good in our breakfast world.  Behold the first of these breakfast bake recipes.

Ingredients:
Coconut oil, approx. 1 T
2 bananas, sliced (the riper, the better)
Dry ingredients:
¾ cup rolled oats
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup chocolate chips
1 tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt

Wet ingredients:
1 ¼ cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
1/3 cup maple syrup
¼ cup unsweetened applesauce

Optional: Spectrum Decadent Blend Chia & Flax Blend with Coconut & Cocoa

Step 1: Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spread coconut oil over the surface of a small casserole dish. Slice the bananas into chunks and place in bottom of dish.

Step 2: Gather your dry ingredients. Mix together in a bowl, then pour dry mix over bananas in the dish.

Step 3: Gather wet ingredients. Mix together in the same bowl (I’m all for less dirty dishes)! Pour wet mix over dry mix in casserole dish.

Step 4: Optional: Sprinkle Spectrum Decadent Blend Chia & Flax Blend with Coconut & Cocoa over the entire dish. Flax & Chia are both great sources of Omega 3’s which most of us don’t get enough of. This is a great way to sneak them in! If you don’t have this blend, you could even just sprinkle ground flax seed.

Step 5: Pop that delicious oat bake in your preheated oven! Now the hard part: waiting while your house starts to smell heavenly. Bake for 35-40 minutes.

Step 6: Take it out of the oven, and let it cool. It will be hard since it will smell so good, but you can do it! (We couldn’t, though, so we stirred in cold applesauce to ours so we could eat it faster).

Step 7: Audrey approved!