Baked Peanut Butter Oats

Well hi there...so things have got a tad busier in the Love and Cake household. Not for any exciting reason, have just been trying to squeeze more things; both boring (working) and fun (learning to knit), into the increasingly short days. It's meant that more often than not breakfast has had to be a speedy affair or appropriate train picnic fodder which, I'm afraid, is the inevitable consequence of emerging from an extended student existence and is unlikely to change within the next few decades.

But I still want breakfast to be a treat, it's the first thing you eat after not consuming anything for a whole half a day and I want it to be something I look forward to when the alarm goes off in what really should be classed as the middle of the night considering the dark and the cold; in Scotland from now on that's anytime up to about 10 o clock.

If you're not a peanut butter fan, firstly, eeerrrrm perhaps book an appointment with your GP, and secondly, you might want to go away and make a cup of tea while I waffle on (mmm waffles) a bit more. If you are a fan though, hurrah, this is the perfect busy weekday brekkie. Make ahead, half healthy (oats, natural peanut butter), half treaty (butter and quite a lot of sugar), cut and come again and swoon worthily delicious, it has all the required attributes. 

I'm afraid the warm, fudgey, claggy-in-a-good-way geniusness of this simple bake doesn't translate well via photographs, which really just show brown stodge, so you'll just have to trust me, oooor perhaaaaps you might want to give it a go yourself, go on you know you want to. With Love and Cake.

Baked Peanut Butter Oats.

Adapted from tidymom

A few notes:

• The portion here was served, after a blast in the microwave, with milk and elderberry syrup, I was going for a PB&Jam feel. But you could go with just plain, with actual jam or banana is really good too, or how about Nutella. yEEEs.
• I was anxious that mine wasn't cooking and setting enough so after 20minutes in the oven I mixed everything around in the dish to redistribute it all. Ooor I could be lying and I could have had an accident which involved turning the dish upside down in the oven and having to spoon everything back into the dish, you decide. Either way I have tweaked the oven temperature and cooking time so hopefully you won't have to do that.
• I feel a bit adverse to weighing things for a breakfast so I just used a average sized mug to measure everything and popped it into the dish that looked most appropriately sized. Much simpler and more breakfast friendly that scales.

Makes enough for a good weeks' breakfast for one

You will need

a small-ish ovenproof dish, greased

1.5 mugs oats

1 mug soft brown sugar

3/4 mug milk

1/4 cup melted butter

1 egg

1 tsp baking powder

pinch salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 your fav peanut butter- I used organic smooth with no added sugar

• Preheat the oven to 180°c.
• Mix everything together in a large bowl until well combined. A strong whisk is helpful here.
• Pour and scrape the mix into your oven dish then pop into the oven and bake for 35 minutes. If it looks golden and wobble-free at this point, fab, you're ready, if it's not quite set, give it another 10 minutes.
• Set aside to cool overtime and fall asleep excited.