Friday 12 April 2013

Gluten Free Breakfast Series Recipe No. 3 - Overnight Oats

Another oat based breakfast, oh those oats - their oats of versatile. I love them. They absorb whatever flavour you want them to be and then fill you up for ages with that slow to release energy. Oats have all sorts of good in them, according to Google*. They just keeping giving.

*As with most food related googling there are as many results for oats are amazing as oats may kill you, eventually. Something is only true until the next truth comes along. Oats / Chocolate / Fill in the blank is good for you one day, bad the next and then good again. Who knows.

Anyway, if you like oats and believe they are good for you, then this may be a recipe for you. In my mind its a cold version of porridge, ready when you get up in the morning, cos you were organised and made it the night before. So its particularly good in spring/summer when you want something to fill you up, but you don't want the heat of porridge and you want something smooth in texture instead of crunchy granola. I like looking at recipes for overnight oats, porridge and oatmeal on a couple of different healthy food blogs. In particular Fit Foodie Finds and Chocolate Covered Katie. You can adapt it easily to your tastes / whats in the fridge/cupboard and its quick and easy to make to your dietary requirements.

The Basic Ingredients
1/4 cup of oats (60ml)
2 tbsp milled flaxseed (30ml) (or other kinds of milled seed)
About 1/2 cup (120ml) of milk or yoghurt of your choice. Depending on how thick you want the consistency you may want more liquid. Its just a case of trial and error. I like it thick so tend to go for the yoghurt version, but both work well.

Other Potential Ingredients
1 small ripe and diced banana
A tbsp (15ml) of honey or maple syrup or agave if your using plain (soya) yoghurt/ milk. If using flavoured milk or yoghurt you won't need this.
A heaped table (or dessert) spoon of nut butter - any kind will work. So far I've tried peanut butter, which adds a saltiness to the sweetness (and adds to the texture, I always use crunchy peanut butter), hazelnut butter adds to the sweetness and almond butter adds something that I like but can't yet describe, thats more subtle than the peanut or hazelnut
Chocolate chips
Sultanas / other dried fruit
Cinnamon
Cocoa
Whole nuts instead of nut butter - pecans are particularly good (but I think we are good in everything)
Seeds
Fresh fruit
Vanilla or coffee essences 
Other spreads you may like (Nutella?) 
 
The Method
I like to measure everything into some tupperware, mix it together, put the lid on and stick in the fridge. Not much to it.

And the possibilities are endless, just not all at once. 

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