My make-ahead Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal is the perfect breakfast for Easter! With all the flavours of carrot cake and hearty oats, this will keep you full until lunch and fool your taste buds into thinking you’re eating cake for breakfast!
Are you a breakfast person?
I know some people who can go until 12pm before getting hungry, but me?
I wake up STARVING and wanting to eat ALLTHETHINGS.
Hence the need to pre-plan breakfast the night before. If I wake up with no breakfast plans, I get grumpy. Quickly.
This insatiable need for food before 8am means that I quite often find myself trying to come up with new ideas to keep breakfast delicious and filling, so I don’t cave and eat the cake I’m baking at 9am.
Today, I give you Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal. It might just be my new favourite breakfast. You can make it the day before and then have breakfast ready for the next few days.
Slightly warmed in the microwave with extra cinnamon and sweetener on top, it is just pure bliss.
In actual fact, I’ve made this twice in the last 3 days.
It’s honestly that good. Bearing in mind it serves 4… in theory I should only need to make it twice a WEEK. Try and tell my cravings to only have one serving for breakfast, once a day.
It’s just not working. But, I hear breakfast for dinner is totally a thing these days, so I guess that makes it OK! 🙂
Now, many baked oatmeal recipes I’ve seen use honey, however, I seem to be allergic, so I used agave nectar. You can use honey if you’d rather, but I adored the flavour that agave gave these oats.
I find agave has a richer flavour, with less tang, which I definitely prefer. I think maybe the honey would have altered what I was trying to achieve with the carrot cake flavours.
You know by now how much I adore oats for breakfast, so there’s a full 2 cups in here along with 2tsp cinnamon and 1tsp ginger. The first batch I made, I only used 1tsp cinnamon and it just wasn’t enough.
Bumping it up to 2tsp made it the perfect amount. You get the spicy warmth along with the sweetness from the agave and a little crunch from the carrots.
I just love how warm and comforted I feel after eating a bowl (I’m eating a bowl as I type this!). With the “Spring” weather we’re seeing this week, I’m wanting to hibernate in my dressing gown with a big old bowl of oatmeal.
Honestly, 70mph winds, rain, hail stones and thunder storms is what we have this week. We had 2 glorious days when I truly thought Spring had arrived and now it seems like we’ve gone backwards. I really hope Easter weekend is brighter!
Mind you, come rain or shine, this Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal is the perfect breakfast recipe. Sweet, spicy, crunchy and filling, I can’t think of a better way to start the day!
Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups (200g) rolled oats
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- Pinch salt
- 1 1/2 cups (225g) grated carrot
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup (165g) agave nectar
- 1 cup (240ml) milk
- 1 large egg
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180C/350F and spray an 8x8 inch square pan with cooking spray.
- Place oats, baking powder, spices, salt and grated carrot into a large bowl and stir to combine.
- Place vanilla extract, agave nectar, milk and egg into a jug and beat lightly to combine.
- Pour your wet ingredients into your dry and stir until everything is coated in the wet mixture.
- Tip into your prepared baking dish and level off with a spatula/wooden spoon.
- Place in the oven for 35-40 minutes, until golden, slightly puffy and set. If it still wobbles in the centre, then give it a few more minutes. The very edges will be a dark golden colour.
- Dig straight in, or leave to cool, then keep it in the fridge, covered for 4 days.
- Oatmeal is best served warm from the microwave with a sprinkling of cinnamon.
Notes
Annie is a self-taught baker, recipe developer and food photographer, who has an obsession with dessert and beauty! 
