With these breakfast oatmeal cupcakes, you cook just once and get a delicious and healthy breakfast for the entire month!
The simple breakfast oatmeal cupcakes are one of my family’s favorite things to eat on rushed mornings.
I first made the recipe years ago, and we still love them!
My mother often makes a batch for herself and takes them to work so she can have a nutritious breakfast that’s easy to prepare on busy weekdays.
She’ll send me a text message with a screenshot, saying “Guess what I had for breakfast again today!”
Readers also love these Healthy Blueberry Muffins
These wholesome breakfast cupcakes are:
Quick to make
Portable and non messy
Easy to eat at a desk or pack in a lunchbox
Gluten free and vegan friendly
Just throw a couple into your bag, perhaps along with a container of peanut butter and some fresh fruit, and you’re good to go with a balanced breakfast.
My family, a former college roommate, and eight of my friends are all hooked!
Leftover Oatmeal? Make Baked Oats
Above, watch the step-by-step oatmeal cupcake recipe video
Never skip breakfast again.
Cook once, and you don’t have to worry about breakfast for close to a month!
These customizable “breakfast” baked oatmeal cupcakes are great on-the-go fuel for those days when you have zero time in the morning to prepare a big meal.
The recipe can be oil free, and it gives you the option to easily change up the flavor by choosing different spices and add-ins for endless breakfast cupcake variations.
Do you ever skip breakfast? And what do you usually eat on days when sitting down to breakfast just isn’t an option? When I was a teenager, I hated getting up early, so breakfast was often something portable, eaten in the car as I rushed to school.
I never understood how my friends who skipped breakfast could make it through class. The only times I’ve ever really skipped breakfast were weekends when I was 13 or 14… because I’d completely sleep through it!
Also make these Vegan Brownies – NO crazy ingredients
Breakfast Oatmeal Cupcake Flavors
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Raisin: replace up to half of the mini chocolate chips in the base recipe below with chopped raisins.
Banana Bread: add a half teaspoon of ground cinnamon to the batter, and stir in a handful of crushed walnuts or pecans if desired.
Coconut Cookie Dough: use coconut oil or coconut butter and stir in about a third of a cup of shredded coconut before baking.
Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cup: replace the oil with an equal amount of peanut butter, and throw in a handful of chopped peanuts if you wish.
You can also turn the recipe into Chocolate Chip Breakfast Squares!
Breakfast Oatmeal Cupcakes To Go
Ingredients
- 5 cups rolled oats
- 2 1/2 cups mashed banana (or this Banana-Free Version)
- 1 tsp salt
- 5 tbsp pure maple syrup, agave, or honey OR stevia equivalent amount
- 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips, optional
- 2 1/3 cups water (Increase to 2 2/3 cups if using stevia)
- 1/4 cup oil, nut butter, or additional banana
- 2 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- optional add-ins: cinnamon, shredded coconut, chopped walnuts, ground flax or chia, wheat germ, raisins, dried fruit, etc.
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 380 F, and line 24-25 cupcake tins. In a large mixing bowl, combine all dry ingredients and stir very well. In a separate bowl, combine and stir all wet ingredients (including banana). Mix wet into dry, then pour into the cupcake liners and bake 21 minutes. I also like to then broil for 1-2 minutes, but it’s optional. (If you let them cool overnight, they'll no longer stick to the liners.) These oatmeal cakes can be eaten right away, or they can be frozen and reheated for an instant breakfast on a busy day.View Nutrition Facts
Video
Notes
Healthy Breakfast Ideas
Overnight Oats – 15 NEW Recipes!
Or this Almond Flour Banana Bread
Your photography is amazing Katie! Simple is definitely better when it comes to taking pictures. I love that first one where you can see all of the chocolate chips.
I cannot skip breakfast. I wake up most mornings starving. The other day I actually had a horrible stomach ache that ended up being hunger. To those who skip food in the AM, I just don’t understand you! 🙂
I agree! If I don’t eat almost immediately after waking up I turn into a grumpy monster. Oatmeal is my favorite breakfast so I can’t wait to try these!
I must eat within an hour of waking up!! I can’t wait to try these.
Same here! Without breakfast, I am grumpy all day… =/
I’m the same way! I have to eat in the morning! Breakfast is GOOD for your body! 🙂
I’m wondering how much “regular” sugar you would use?? Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
I was wondering the same thing.
I found this conversion:
NuStevia White Stevia Powder No Carbs (w/Erythritol): 1 packet is as sweet as 2 tsp of sugar
at https://nunaturals.com/page/297
I want to make these. I use Stevia from Trader Joe’s which is rated the BEST! I swear I’m hooked. I’m not sure how much to use however. Gotta find out. These oatmeal cupcakes look delish!
I used about 5 tablespoons of brown sugar and they turned out super delicious.
I did a little research, if calculations are correct, 5 packets of the sweetener is equivalent to 1/4 of plan sugar. I’m also using quick oats.
I just put a batch in the oven with that substitution. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
How did it go with the quick oats? I am about to make these and that’s all I have! I hope they were good!
I was wondering the same thing…I want to use quick oats too.
I used oatmeal (quickoats) and it was delicious!!
Quick oats work perfectly fine.
I make something similar and I use quick oats. I also use apple sauce instead of oil. Sometimes I use a little pineapple, sometimes, coconut, different chips, sometimes nuts, always brown sugar. Sometimes they are muffins sometimes cookies. Just all depends on my mood and time. I rarely measure. Very easy to kinda feel your way through and add what you want. My kids always love them no matter what I do and I like them with a cup of coffee. My husband likes to grab for breakfast. I try to cut fat and make healthy but I am a southern cook. Lol
Stivia and sugar are substituted equally.
Stevia is so much sweeter than sugar a direct substitution is not possible you need to research how much to use.
Not true!
Could I add peanut butter to this? If so, how?
Absolutely! Just stir it in with the other ingredients before transferring the batter to the muffin tin 🙂
also drink 2 cups of water early morning and with these cookies to aid digestion. Water from the tap is soooo important.
This sounds convenient and delicious. Will make it and leave feed back (if I don’t forget).
On the other hand, I’ve been skipping breakfast far too often. I can’t wait to try these. They’re going to save my mornings. Pinned them too. I think people will enjoy them over at http://www.wetalkhealthy.com
Define “breakfast”……I eat around 10:30 or 11am usually. Can’t really stomach anything much earlier than that.
Breakfast is defined pretty much by its name: break fast. If you had dinner at say 8PM and went to bed at midnight, slept 8 hours…. when you wake, it would have been *twelve hours* since your body had any food! So skipping breakfast can really mess with your blood sugar levels (and that can make us very cranky, if you have hypoglycemia you know what i mean!)
If you can get something gentle in your tummy, even a handful of nuts for protein, it will really make a difference in your day! 🙂 Whole grains are really good too which is why I love Katie’s idea!
“Oat protein is nearly equivalent in quality to soy protein, which World Health Organization research has shown to be equal to meat, milk, and egg protein. The protein content of the hull-less oat kernel (groat) ranges from 12 to 24%, the highest among cereals”. (from wikipeda)
It was sort of a joke/tongue in cheek Amy Lynn. I break my ‘fast’ around 10:30 or 11. To most people that isn’t ‘breakfast’ but more like brunch or lunch. What our bodies need MOST when we wake up is fluids. We are nearly dehydrated after having no fluid intake for 8, 10, 12 hours. In the morning I have a 16 oz water. Solid food intake comes a little later for me. 🙂
Sounds delish! I eat within 1/2 hour of getting up. I also drink about 12 oz of water during the night. Have a glass of water on my nightstand every night. And yes I do go to the bathroom a lot. This recipe sounds great!!!
My breakfast is usually 26 oz of V8 tomato juice, followed by a breakfast sandwich at about 9 am this allows me to take my morning meds as soon as i get up.
I dont eat until around 1pm most days and I get up on school days at 6:30. Not everyone is a breakfast person. I just cant stomach it.
Haha I NEVER skip breakfast! This is a great idea, and so cute!
Smartie!!! What a great idea! I would have never thought of this in a million years – thank you for saving me a lifetime (or two! LOL)!
Oh yeah – I never skip breakfast; my stomach would digest itself, and I’m not so sure I’d still be vegan (or alive!) 😉 Ha-ha…
So funny – I made almost the exact same thing last spring. I had raspberries in mine too, with the same calorie count! They freeze really well… I have a winter version of the recipe I’m working on right now. 🙂
I’m in a freezer group and I was assigned breakfast this month. I happened to come across this recipe and had the basic ingredients. Oats, honey, applesauce, flax seed, walnuts and cranberries.
I love bananas but I did not use them.
They are in the oven now…
I’m so glad you mentioned they freeze well, because that’s the goal of our group…easy, quick foods.
Holy crap these look *so* fun! I cannot wait to make them!!!!!
Thanks for sharing =D
I don’t eat a lot of oatmeal but these look really good and my brother has been in a muffin mood lately. Plus growing boys always need snacks LOL.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for this recipe. I’ve been needing to create an “easy” go-to breakfast meal on the 3 days a week I work. This is perfect!
Yummmm!
I always eat breakfast. I find that even if I’m not hungry when I wake up (which I usually am), if I don’t eat I will be RAVENOUS 1-2 hours later.
These look great and super easy! I could never skip breakfast. I’m always hungry in the morning, and it sets a healthy tone for the rest of my day.
I agree Ashley!!!!!!!!!
Hi Katie,
These look great as a snack! Just wondering about a couple of things – first, since they are meant as a ‘portable breakfast’, how come the recipe is for small cupcakes rather than large muffins? I mean, even with some peanut butter and fruit (as you suggest) you’d need about four of these for a normal breakfast, so it just seems like a decent sized muffin would make more sense. I’m curious about your reason for making them so small – is it to reduce the baking time? Second, I’ve never seen a recipe for cupcakes or muffins before that uses water as the main liquid. Is there a particular reason for this,or had you just run out of milk? Sorry but this sparked my curiosity as a fellow baker… Obviously it’s common to use water for bread baking, but it had never occurred to me that one might do it for sweet baked goods – but now that I’ve seen this I’m wondering how much difference the two liquids make. I assume it would be mostly in terms of flavour? If I’ve understood you correctly from some of your previous posts, you tend to experiment quite a lot with a recipe until it’s perfect, so if the use of water is a deliberate choice, would you mind sharing the secret behind why it’s preferable to milk in this recipe? Thanks in advance, and sorry for the long post and all the questions!
That’s just how many the recipe makes. They fill the muffin tins completely, so you couldn’t make them any bigger (unless you owned a jumbo muffin tin).
As for the water, the recipe was adapted from my single-serving boatmeals, which use just a little water. I’ve not tried using milk for the recipe, so I can’t tell you the results of that.
And as it states in the post (and in the nutrition link), it’s definitely not meant to just have a cupcake and nothing else as breakfast. My roommate brings 2 with her to work, sometimes with an applesauce cup or whatever else she wants. (I never asked what she eats with it at work.) My mom is fine with just two for breakfast. Everyone’s needs are different, and not everyone needs a big breakfast ;).
I have found one is a perfect addition to our morning smoothies. My husband packs 2 for breakfast everyday! And my kids love one for a snack after school and in their lunches. As you can guess, I make a batch almost every week! We love them, especially with lots of coconut!
hi, i see people saying something about boatmeal recipes?? what is that?
A link to all of the boatmeal flavors can be found here: https://lett-trim.today/chocolate-covered-recipes/all-things-oatmeal/oatmeal-cake-flavors/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
They look great to me.
Hannah, I am confused about your comment that you’d need to eat four cupcakes for a normal breakfast. Four cupcakes plus the peanut butter and fruit that Katie recommended would be like a 700 calorie breakfast! Unless you are an extreme athlete, I think that is a little big for an everyday breakfast.
Actually 700 calories for breakfast is about right. If your eating 2000 calories a day you want the majority of those calories to be between breakfast and lunch with fewer calories at your dinner meal. Due to the fact you will be relaxing and shutting down for sleep shortly after.
Jason – 2000 calories is recommended intake for average man (making 700 cal breakfast reasonable). For average woman it’s 1200, which means fewer cupcakes! 😉
I would say this amount is for weight-loss, and the average would be more like 1,600 calories…but of course calorie needs will vary from person to person.
I agree that everyone’s caloric needs are different. 700 calories of the right calories would not be too many, but that amount of food may be too dense for the average stomach to hold comfortably.
I can’t recommend The Calorie Myth book enough for those who are curious about how much they should be consuming.
Anonymous: your calculations are a bit skewed. ANY woman should be able to eat far more than 1200 calories without weight gain. If this isn’t true for you, there are larger issues going on with your hormone balance. Refer to the book I mentioned!
Please, take care of your bodies, ladies. 🙂
as a kosher and vegan baker I’ve often substituted water for milk in recipes – never really saw much of a difference although I could imagine that milk would add a higher fat content to the recipe and therefore add some moisture, but I’ve never really been one to have milk in the house so almost any time a recipe calls for milk in the mix I use water – vegan mills are also an alternative if I have them on hand.
Katie, thanks for your reply.
Anonymous, I think you’ll find that most professional (if that’s what you mean by “extreme”) athletes need to eat far more than that to sustain their training. Personally I’m not an athlete, in fact I do barely any exercise at all, and I have around 500-600 calories for breakfast, sometimes more.
Ilana, that’s interesting to know, thank you!
I am curious as to what you eat the rest of the day. I am 5’4″, 37 yrs old and weigh about 130 and am hardly active at all. The MAX calories per day I can eat and not continuously gain weight is about 1500-1600. Their are BMR calculations you can do. The amount it “costs” me just to run my body systems is 1347.4 and for little to no exercise to MAINTAIN my weight is MAX 1616 calories. I have been skipping breakfast to save calories so I am trying to figure out how others do it. How do you eat a breakfast that big with little exercise and maintain a healthy weight… do you eat smaller meals later, no snacks, advice is appreciated? Thanks!
It is easily done if your calories do not come from refined carbs.
I’m 5’5 and 120 pounds, and I eat at least 700 kcal at breakfast. I think my average daily intake is about 2200~2500 kcal. I’ve been eating this way for about 8 months and haven’t gained any weight (and I don’t exercise a lot, I mean, I ride my bike every once in a while and do yoga two times a week).
So that means that if you’re eating the right foods (high carb, low fat, no oil, minimum refined foods), you can eat however much you want without gaining any weight.
There’s no need to count calories (we’re the only animals doing that, right?).
I hope you read this comment and start searching and investigating about what I just wrote.
I wish you the best.
I’ve used almond milk in a similar recipe, it tasted great.
Hannah, are you thinking those are mini-cupcakes? I think they are made in a regular sized muffin pan.
One thing that perhaps Jaime doesn’t realize is that these “cupcakes” are very dense. There is no egg and no leavening agent (baking powder or soda) in them, so they don’t have a cake/cupcake/bread texture. They’re like hockey pucks. That’s not to put them down, but just a couple is a lot when you’re talking about pretty much solid oatmeal. Remember, there are FIVE cups of oatmeal in this recipe to make just 24 cupcakes. That’s a lot.
As for my own experience making these, I just made them with bananas and golden raisins. They’re pretty darned good. I used three tablespoons of brown sugar for sweetening. Another thing — I made half in paper baking cups and half in foil cups. They’re sticking to the paper cups like a bugger, but they don’t stick at all to the foil ones.
Very good recipe — thanks.
Hannah, think of them as a breakfast granola cake instead of a ‘muffin’.
This is such a perfect idea! I’ve been so busy lately just running around all over the place and it can be hard to make sure that I’m eating healthy, energizing foods that are easy to eat on the go. I’ve been doing a lot of containers with beans, quinoa, and veggies, but that requires utensils and a steady place to sit and eat. I get tired of granola bars, so this homemade option looks so fresh and yummy!
love this idea! do you think they would still taste good if you freeze them?
yes
I have made a similar version of these and froze them. I throw them in the oven to thaw them out and get them good and hot (I try not to use my microwave very often), and they are just as delicious as the day I made them. Enjoy!
Looks great! I am a lover of gooey things, like fresh oatmeal. I believe that you share my love of gooey vs dry foods, and I was just wondering if these were something that you liked personally or they have just been popular with others? Or do the gooey tastebuds prefer regular oatmeal? These would be great for convenience sake, I’m just not sure that I would like them baked vs regular!
I think they are good (or I wouldn’t have posted the recipe lol). But I don’t eat them for breakfast often. I like bigger breakfasts and don’t really have a need for anything portable.
Haha- I just know that sometimes you post things that readers will like, though they may not personally be your favorite is all 🙂 Thanks!
I was just thinking last night that I need soemthing on the go for the busy mornings! This is perfect.
I’m been searching for about a week now on this same thing. I’m denfinely going to try yours but I’m a little confuzed but another post. Do you put them in mini cupcake liner or regular size?
Regular muffin tins.