The next morning, I had breakfast at the hotel (it was free; I am poor. What can I say?). I had thought about going to a vegetarian restaurant there for baked goods, but I didn't have time. My plan was to have yogurt and a banana or something similar. Nope. No yogurt. Not a single type. I ended up with oatmeal, which I love. How can you go wrong with oatmeal? Let me tell you how--by having NO VIABLE oatmeal toppings. Beside the oatmeal were three little canisters. Brown sugar. Walnuts. Raisins. My thought was to add fresh fruit to it, but all they had was melon. No strawberries. No bananas. No apples. Nothing. I went with the brown sugar, walnuts, and raisins (as they apparently wanted me to). It was...edible.
My intention was to post a recipe for nutella swirled banana muffins last night (that I would then have for breakfast this morning...after eating one for dessert). However, the combination of a very tiring day (7 am wake-up, 4.5 hours of panels, 5 hour drive) and the lack luster oatmeal from the morning changed my mind. Instead: Nutella Swirled Banana Baked Oatmeal. Can I just say yum? It smelled delicious; it tasted delicious. I know everyone is jealous. I'm going to bask in its beauty for a moment.
My swirls of Nutella aren't beautiful, but that didn't really matter to me.
What I did was modify a standard baked oatmeal recipe.
Baked oatmeal is one of my new favorite things. I was a bit bored with oatmeal after having it every Saturday and Sunday for years. However, my sister told me to try a banana baked oatmeal recipe that she uses and I was hooked. I have made banana baked oatmeal, cherry baked oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly baked oatmeal, coconut chocolate chip baked oatmeal, pumpkin baked oatmeal. The list could go on forever.
Here is my recipe: '
Nutella Swirled Banana Baked Oatmeal
1/2 cup old fashioned oats (I may have added just a smidge extra)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
dash of salt
1 extra small banana (I used a frozen banana that I microwaved for a few seconds to thaw and I didn't have an extra small, so I used about half of a large banana.)
1/3 cup milk (I used light almond milk)
1 tablespoon egg beaters
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon Nutella, divided (I used the World Market Banana Chocolate spread which made it just that much more awesome.)
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Spray a baking dish. I have a small rectangle baking dish that I always use, but ramekins work well too. You want it pretty small or the oatmeal will be very thin. Mine is about 4x6 and it is pretty thin as it is (but it cooks more quickly!).
Next, mix your dry ingredients together in a small bowl. Note that there is no sugar in here. I think it works out well that way, because the banana is sweet and the Nutella is as well. However, mine was vaguely salty. You can add a little sugar here to cut that, if you want.
In a separate bowl, mash the banana, then mix in the rest of the wet ingredients except the Nutella.
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.
Pour into your prepared pan. Top with 1/4 teaspoons of Nutella in the corners of the pan. You can do any design there.
Bake for 3-5 minutes. Take a knife and swirl the Nutella. It is too thick to do this before you bake it at all, but be careful. Watch the oven or you may cook it too long and then you can't swirl it. The swirls disperse the sweetness throughout, so you want to be able to do that.
Return to the oven and bake for another 20 minutes. I like mine to be brown around the edges, but the important thing is that it is set in the middle. You can check it with a fork.
Let it cool for a few minutes (if you can!) and enjoy.
Now you don't have to be jealous!
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