It’s been fooooorever since I’ve made baked oatmeal! I’ve been craving that peanut butter and chocolate lately, so instead of making a full blown dessert, I decided to work those flavors into a breakfast-worthy baked oatmeal. This Peanut Butter Brownie Baked Oatmeal is super rich and delicious without being overly sweet. In fact, it only has 1/4 cup brown sugar for the entire dish! The rest of the sweetness comes from mashed bananas, which also keep the baked oatmeal nice and moist. I like to keep my baked oatmeals with just a light kiss of sweetness, so if you’re looking for something more on the dessert level, consider doubling the sugar.
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What is Baked Oatmeal?
If you’re new to the baked oatmeal club, let me say first that the texture is not crunchy like granola (a common misconception when looking at the photos). It’s a moist semi-solid, similar to bread pudding. Baked oatmeal makes a great reheatable breakfast for the week and it even freezes great if you just want a portion once in a while. You can eat it cold, warmed up, or with a splash of milk over top. It’s totally up to you. It does need to be refrigerated after baking, though.
Remember how cocoa puffs would turn the milk in the bottom of your bowl into chocolate milk? This kinda does that. :D Hello childhood!
Can I Substitute the Banana?
While I haven’t tried any substitutes for the banana in this particular recipe, I do make other baked oatmeal recipes with applesauce or yogurt instead. My first choice here would probably be yogurt because the dairy will most likely pair well with the chocolate.
Peanut Butter Brownie Baked Oatmeal
Servings 6Ingredients
- 1.5 cups mashed ripe bananas (about 3 medium bananas) ($0.68)
- 1 large egg ($0.27)
- 1/4 cup natural peanut butter ($0.31)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar ($0.04)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract ($0.28)
- 1/2 tsp salt ($0.02)
- 1 tsp baking powder ($0.06)
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon ($0.05)
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder ($0.29)
- 2 cups whole milk ($1.12)
- 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats* ($0.50)
- 2 Tbsp natural peanut butter (for topping) ($0.15)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
- Mash the bananas well, then place them in a large mixing bowl along with the egg, peanut butter, brown sugar, vanilla, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and cocoa powder. Whisk until the mixture is mostly smooth (there may be small pieces of banana).
- Add the milk to the chocolate banana mixture, and then whisk until smooth again. Add the dry rolled oats and then stir until combined.
- Pour the oat mixture into a 2-3 quart casserole dish coated with non-stick spray. Drizzle the remaining 2 Tbsp peanut butter over the oats and drag a knife through to create swirls. If needed, warm the peanut butter slightly to make it runny enough to drizzle over the oats.
- Bake the oats in the preheated oven for 45 minutes. Serve warm, or refrigerate until ready to eat.
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Notes
Nutrition
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How to Make Peanut Butter Brownie Baked Oatmeal – Step by Step Photos
Begin by preheating the oven to 375ºF. Mash 3 to 4 bananas until you have 1.5 cups of banana mash.
Place the mashed banana in a large mixing bowl along with 1 large egg, 1/4 cup natural peanut butter, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Whisk these ingredients together until they’re fairly smooth.
Add 2 cups whole milk to the mixture and whisk until smooth again. You may have some small chunks of banana and that’s okay.
Finally, stir 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats into the batter until everything is well combined.
Pour the oat mixture into a 2-3 quart casserole dish coated with non-stick spray. Drizzle 2 Tbsp more natural peanut butter over the oat mixture. You may need to warm the peanut butter to get it runny enough to drizzle.
I like to drizzle it in thin lines going horizontally, then drag a knife in the opposite direction a few times to create subtle swirls. Bake the oatmeal in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.
After 45 minutes the Peanut Butter Brownie Baked Oatmeal will look a little more like this and your house will smell AMAZING. Now you can dig in, or refrigerate it for later.
Baked oatmeal is actually really good both warm AND cold.
But my favorite way to eat it is warmed with cold milk poured over top. :)
If I wanted to double this recipe, what size Pyrex would you suggest and for how long, approximately? Also, can it be prepped the night before baking?
I’ve never tried prepping it the night before, so I’m not sure how that might affect the end product. If you double the recipe I’d suggest a 9×13 inch dish, but I’ve never tried doubling it either so I’m not sure how long it will take to cook.
I only used 1 c of mashed bananas, as it was all I had on hand. After baking I wished I increased the milk a little to offset the difference.
That being said, this was delicious! I loved the peanut butter swirl on top. I’ve got breakfast for all of the rest of the week!
I baked this in a 12″ round cake pan and decrease the cooking time by about 15 minutes. Turned out great!
This is “too good to be oatmeal” as my wife put it :)I made it as written (except I only had soy milk on hand and used that; well, and a half cup of chocolate milk I had leftover! EXTRA CHOCOLATE) and it’s delicious. Banana, chocolate and peanut butter are three of my favorite flavors, so this is an excellent combination. I love how much cocoa powder is in this! We make baked oatmeal for breakfast all fall and winter long, and it’s great to have another recipe for our repertoire.
The Peanut Butter Brownie Baked Oatmeal is so freaking delicious!!! My apartment smelled like a chocolate brownie, which has an intoxicating aroma. I served the baked oatmeal with sausage links. I’m looking forward to enjoying this for breakfast for the next several days. Thank you, Beth!!! :-)
Can I use a baking pan for this?
Yes, that should work just fine.
How would you adjust this recipe to use regular sweetened peanut butter? Maybe reduce the added sugar and salt elsewhere?
Yes, you could reduce the sugar a smidge, but I don’t think you’d need to reduce the salt.
I used regular peanut butter since that’s all I had on-hand and I didn’t adjust anything. Didn’t even think of it, to be honest. I thought the end product was great, I ate it like brownies!
I’m not really big on bananas.. if I wanted to substitute something in for them could I do that? And what do you think would work best? It looks really, really, good. I’m excited to try it.
You can use unsweetened applesauce or even yogurt (not-Greek style, I would suggest vanilla flavor to compensate for the sweetness from the bananas).
I’m allergic to bananas. Any way to skip or substitute them?
You can use unsweetened applesauce or vanilla yogurt (not Greek style).
It’s delicious but maybe next time I’ll skip the salt? The salt in the butter is quite enough, I think. Unless when writing “natural” you mean “unsalted peanut butter”, which I can’t get here where I live.
You can easily make peanut butter from scratch. Can’t get more natural than that. For starters, try googling “Wok Fried Peanut Butter”.
Would this work with a flax egg or chia egg? I don’t have any experience baking without eggs, but this looks so delicious!
I don’t have any experience with using chia egg, but hopefully someone who has tried it will chime in! :)
Yes, it works! Flax egg, too.
Any substitute for the bananas?
You can use unsweetened applesauce or vanilla yogurt.
Can you substitute a flax egg for the egg in the recipe?
I haven’t figured out how to get to the recipes I’ve saved! Frustrating!
Unfortunately I don’t have an option to do that on my site, but there are several websites out there that allow you to collect and save recipes from any website (instead of just one), which is super convenient. I suggest Plantoeat.com
I’ve been wanting to do another Baked Oatmeal, and was getting ready for a Funky Monkey, but I think I’ll make this one instead. Just need to wait for the bananas to ripen a bit more.
Can you taste the banana?
Yes, there is a faint banana flavor.