Oven Baked Banana and Blueberry Oats

An oven baked porridge with bananas, blueberries and lots of other wholesome goodness! It has a crunchy outside and soft oaty centre- perfect served with yoghurt, milk and a dollop of peanut butter

I have finally recovered from my cold thank GOODNESS. If you read my last post you will know that I recently came down with the winter blues and had a few days of school (which yes, was a total pain since I had to catch up on 3 FULL pages of Business Studies work...) but I am feeling 10x better after having those days off to just chill out and recover. So this week was a bit meh (well the 3 days I had at school were), I had an english mock which was awfulllll... underline that awful about 20 times please. Are you familiar with the book 'Animal Farm'? It's all about politics in Russia but represented by yep you guessed it- animals. It's weird and confusing and I don't know how I feel about pegging my entire english GCSE on it, if you happen to be studying it too then let me know what you think (I'd like to believe I'm not the only one who thinks this?) I also missed a German listening exam and the exact words of my teacher were "hmm you need to do it really, I'm free Friday after school?"....I replied with a reluctant "Sure..." because that is obviously how I want to spend my Friday. I got 33/ 35 though, so that fact that I was tired and couldn't really be bothered didn't affect me too badly.
This automatically gave me a motive to celebrate and what better way to celebrate than with oats? I know you agree. Especially when it is in the form of baked oats bananaaaa- oh bananas how I love thee.

Not only does it taste like porridges turbo charged cousin but they look beautiful too when they are baked in a pie dish and arranged with a pretty symmetrical pattern- I have it down. I don't need to convince you this is healthy, I like to always keep breakfast goods clean (although I will sometimes make exceptions- pancakes I'm looking at you) and the fact it is mix-it-all-in-one-bowl easy just well, makes it a winner! I will be honest, some mornings my tummy is grumbling like it hasn't seen food in days and I will not be willing to wait 20 minutes for something to bake considering porridge in a saucepan takes me about 5 minutes tops including an array of toppings and a cup of tea. But sometimes you have enough endurance to wait just that little bit longer for that ultimate oaty baked breakfast. This recipe was from the blog Renée kemps and I would just like to mention that everything is literally beautiful on there, It was one of those things were I felt like I could smell and taste the food just from the photography. Which reminds me I need to wipe off the drool from my keyboard...

OVEN BAKED BANANA AND BLUEBERRY OATS

Serves: 2 or 4


INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup + 7 tbsp oats (its a bit of a random amount because of the oat shortage I had- you can round it to 2 cups)
• 2 tbsp flax mix (I used this)
• 5 dates, chopped
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 2 bananas, 1 mashed
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup coconut milk (or regular or almond milk)
• 1 cup water 
• handful of blueberries

METHOD

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.

2. Combine all the ingredients (apart from one banana) in a bowl and mix well.

3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and spread evenly.

4. Cut the banana into slices and arrange on top of the oatmeal along with the blueberries- in a pretty pattern if you like ;) 

5. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until the banana turns golden and the oatmeal is baked through.

6. Enjoy and EAT



What I am doing: Watching Lord of the Rings
What I should be doing: Art coursework
What I want to be doing: Eating popcorn