How I Stopped Cooking Breakfast Every Day

January is, for me at least, the start of Baked Oats Season. The house is cold, so I welcome turning the oven on… health is top of mind, and oatmeal is pretty good for you… And if you bake oatmeal once a week, you can stop cooking breakfast every day in order to rest away the executive function hangover that develops after cooking big feasts throughout the holiday season of late last year. This has been my anchor recipe for years: Blueberry cheesecake baked oatmeal from tablespoon dot com. I make several changes: I cut the added sugar, I remove one prep bowl for easier cleanup, I don’t preheat the oven, I swap cream cheese for neufchâtel, and I only use wild blueberries. After hearing me say that, you should be able to click the recipe link and do all that yourself-- recipe transmission complete. But I think you’ll benefit from sticking around to see my method in action. In a big bowl, combine 4 cups of milk, 2 eggs, 3 tablespoons of liquid fat like melted butter or olive oil, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla. After all the Thanksgiving and Christmas baking, it’s not uncommon for me to be out of vanilla by January, so sometimes I’ll do 4 tablespoons of bourbon or Licor43. Some people see this as a bizarre move, and they make sure to let me know that, but vanilla extract is 70-proof just like vodka is, so I insist it isn’t weird to employ a vanilla-adjeacent liquor or liqueur instead. Mix this all together with a fork until the eggs are broken up, then add 4 cups of rolled oats, 1 and a half teaspoons of baking powder, and a teaspoon of kosher salt. The last ingredient at this stage is a cup of blueberries, and if you haven’t yet made the switch to wild ones, please consider it. Wild blueberries are smaller and they taste sweeter and fruitier. They don’t pop and gush molten hot diluted juice flavor upon biting like cheap commodity jumbo bloobies do. With practice, you’ll realize this recipe is flexible enough to substitute the blueberries for a different fruit, the vanilla for bourbon, the milk for almondmilk, and so the point isn’t to follow what I’m saying just because it’s what I’m presenting today… but if you’re gonna use blueberries please use the ones labeled “wild blueberries”. Thank you. So you pour all this into a greased baking dish and let it sit for 15 minutes. That lets the liquid saturate the oats, and it’s also why I didn’t pre-heat the oven, despite the instructions of the original recipe. You could turn it on now and save a nickel in electric costs so it’s set to 350 right when those 15 minutes of soaking are up. While we’re both waiting, I should address the fact that I omitted a full cup of brown sugar from the original recipe for this mixture. Milk is sweet. Blueberries are sweet. I’m about to top this thing with a sweetened cream cheese mixture and a sweet blueberry jam. I don’t think this needs a cup of sugar added to it. But unlike booze where you can ask “single or a double? ”, unlike THC where you can ask “what’s your dose, 5mG or 10? ”, we haven’t figured out a way to communicate sweetness preferences. Boba shops do percentages, coffee shops go by syrup pumps… Whenever I make a latte for a house guest I have to ask “what do you usually order at starbucks” so I can get a sense of how many tablespoons of sweetened creamer I need to add to their espresso and milk. To me, this will be sweet enough. I do not wish to start every day with a full-on dessert. If you disagree, take a couple tablespoons of coarse sugar and sprinkle it on top of the assembled mixture. The sweetness will be more localized and more likely to bake into a crunchy, highly perceptible top layer, versus mixing that sugar in while it’s all in the original mixing bowl. Anyway! The last part of this dish is to make a creamy cheesecakey swirl, so I use that dirty mixing bowl from before to combine 1 egg and a half cup of sugar with one 8-oz block of softened neufchâtel. Neufchâtel is basically cream cheese but with 2 thirds of the fat content, and even though it sounds exotic, it’s likely at your grocery store right next to the cream cheese. This would be very difficult to do if the cheese was fridge temp, so do make sure to leave it out to soften first. The sugar sweetens it, and the egg helps it bake into a structured firmness that creates defined off-white swirls. Plop little spoonfuls all over the oats, follow those up with up to a half cup of blueberry preserves, and then drag a knife or the back of your scooping spoon all around in smooth sweeping motions so you get this nice marbling effect. Beyond looking nice, it helps distribute the topping more evenly. Now the whole dish can go into the hot oven for 40 minutes, or up to 50 minutes, until the center is no longer jiggly. When it’s done you do have to let it rest for 15 minutes which brings the total cook time over an hour. That’s why I’d prefer to make this on a Sunday evening before the work week begins. When it’s cooled down but still warm, baked oats are a nice cozy semi-sweet snack for eating in a warm bowl in front of the TV on Sunday night, and by then end of my show the oats are fully cooled, thus slice-able into blocks and ready for individual packaging. In a morning rush, this is as portable as a snack bar, and if you do have the time to slow down and luxuriate, a minute in the microwave brings it back into spoonable breakfast bowl territory. Some viewers are gonna watch this video and think “hot dog matter fact I will try baked oatmeal for the first time”, but many others will remark “this fella doesn’t know ball”. That’s because the world of baked oats runs deeper and wider than any normie would ever believe. Devotees know that the recipe provided to you today is simple. Basic, even. There was no savory option provided, no photorealistic rendition of carrot cake nor banana bread, no protein-maxed version with whey powder and sugar replacements. Let this

then be a good gateway for the oat-curious. Anyone who’s caught the gaze of that behatted quaker in the aisle and thought…. what if? Hmm… Chat, crawl AO3 for all instances of “oatmeal” in the enemies to lovers category… I have to go write something… See you next time! Trade has paid to be mentioned at the end of this video. If you’re gonna become the type of person who consumes a warm breakfast every morning, you might also wanna consider being the type of person who has great coffee to go with it. I had a lot of family in town recently, and they drank so much coffee that I supplemented by bean collection with a bag from the grocery store for the first time in probably a year, and it was shocking how bad that stuff is. Stale, improperly roasted, and none too yummy as an early-morning beverage. Switch to Trade and you WILL notice a difference. Each bag is roasted to order and delivered right to your door while it’s still fresh, instead of sitting on a store shelf for several months. And the bean bags that do make their way to your kitchen will be tailored to your personal tastes, not just determined by an algorithm or at random. Take Trade’s quiz, and they’ll find your perfect match. If your first bag isn’t quite to your liking, they’ll replace it for free as part of their “First Bag Guarantee” policy. You’re gonna like they way it tastes. They guarantee it. Right now, Trade is offering 50% off a 1 month trial at drinktrade. com/shaquille. That’s drinktrade. com/shaquille to get 50% off one month. drinktrade. com/shaquille