Baked oatmeal cups with quick oats

My New Year's resolution this year had been to cut down on my hoarding and commit to try to buy smaller amounts of ingredients (particularly baking ingredients), and only when I had a specific application in mind.  I had done a mini-purge of expired ingredients from the pantry, and the guilt over the wasted food/ingredients drove me to strive to do better this year

That being said, I knew that there were many ingredients that we did in fact go through consistently, and therefore I felt less guilty continuing to buying in bulk quantities, such as flour, my beloved Ahmed Mango black tea, instant espresso, and oats of various sorts from Bob's Red Mill.  

Furthermore, at the beginning of shelter-in-home, I had a realization that we were already pretty well stocked to hunker down for a good long while, with exception of fresh produce and dairy items.  I had still a decent amount of flour left over from holiday time, when I stocked up on a couple extra bags of all-purpose and bread flour because there were loads of flour everywhere and everything was on sale!  I had fortuitously JUST made a large mail bulk order of oats, quinoa, and lentils from Bob's Red Mill in late February (truly prescient given that everything is now sold out online through May-June).  I am still working on a bulk package of active dry yeast I bought in... maybe 2015?  It's been hanging out in my freezer and still works just fine.  Longtime readers know that Gus (my sourdough starter) has been with us since December 2011, just celebrating his 8th birthday in December.  We had also conveniently just run out of toilet paper recently and had restocked at Sam's club with one gigantic multi-pack.  

All that to say (and gloat) that my normal mild hoarding tendencies and a touch of luck made us READY FOR THE APOCALYPSE.  When I recounted to my husband about the above, he half-joked that he would never complain about my hoarding ever again.  Whether or not he was serious, now the conversation is recorded for posterity, and I will never let him forget that he said this!  (And also now I will be an uncurable hoarder for life after the anxieties of this pandemic...)

On recent inventory of the pantry, most things were within expiration limits since I had done that clean-out earlier this year, but one thing I found that had just passed the expiration date recently was a partial container of quick oats.   After a series of googling how to use up quick oats, I eventually went down a rabbit hole of baked oatmeal cups.  While most recipes ask for rolled (old-fashioned) oats, the one from the Quaker website says either rolled or quick oats will work, so I went with that base recipe and then added a bunch of flavor embellishments found in other finalist recipes.  

These turned out really well!  They were quick to throw together, very adaptable, baked up nicely, and were easy to remove from the greased muffin tin without needing paper wrappers.  They were moist, just barely sweet, had enough salt to have a good flavor, and the chocolate chips never hurt!  I think the healthy factor is high in these, even with all the embellishments I added!  Hope you can give these a try!

Baked Oatmeal Cups 
(Adapted from a combination of the recipes from Quaker Oats and the Kitchn)

Makes ~12-14 standard muffin size portions

Ingredients:
4 cups quick or rolled ("old-fashioned") oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2-3/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups milk (original recipe said non-fat, I used whole, any non-dairy milk would work too)
1/4 cup pure maple syrup (any other liquid sweetener could work, or even brown sugar)
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4-1/3 cup of nut butter (I was trying to use up a jar of almond butter, so I was closer to 1/3)
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

3/4 cup chocolate chips (up to 1 cup of add-ins of your choice; could also use dried or fresh fruit, coconut, nuts, etc; optional)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350°F.  Liberally grease ~12-14 muffin cups with melted butter or cooking spray.  I used one 12-muffin tin and then two separate individual silicone muffin cups; you could also try to fit everything in 12 cups if your muffin tin wells are big enough (I didn't want to risk it with mine), but just watch for overflow and you might need to add a few extra minutes to the bake time.  If you use muffin paper liners, grease those too; some recipes warned that these tend to stick to muffin papers.

In one large bowl, mix together oats, baking powder, and salt.  In another bowl, whisk together the milk, applesauce, nut butter, liquid sweetener, eggs, and vanilla until smooth.  Combine wet and dry, mix to combine.  Add the chocolate chips (or add-ins of choice) and mix to evenly distribute.  Let mixture stand 5 minutes to soak in liquid.  Divide mixture evenly among prepared muffin cups.  

Bake ~20-25 minutes at 350°F, or until oatmeal is completely set, tops are golden or golden-brown, and a wooden skewer yields moist crumbs or comes out clean.  Mine were done in 20 minutes for the muffin tin, 22 minutes for the silicone cups.  Let cool in pan on a wire rack for about 5-10 minutes, then remove oatmeal cups from pan to cool completely on wire rack.  Can be served warm.

Storage:
After cooling completely, these can be stored in fridge for 5-7 days (per original recipes), or frozen.  Microwave to reheat, in 10-second increments, until desired temperature.  If frozen, thawing overnight in fridge will make reheating easier.