Overnight oats are about as good a breakfast as you could ask for. They’re filling, healthy, and delicious. What’s more, because you make them the night before, you’ll be filled with that ‘I’m so grown up I was organised enough to make my breakfast the night before’ smugness. And you can have 15 minutes more sleep in the morning because you don’t need to make breakfast.
What you’ll need
- 50g rolled porridge oats
- 2 tbsp natural yoghurt
- A drizzle of honey
- 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 50g mixed berries
- 100ml milk
Our basic recipe
Overnight oats are extremely straightforward to make:
- The night before you want to eat them, stick your oats, cinnamon and milk into a bowl (or a Tupperware is fine if you want to eat them on the go) with a pinch of salt, give it a good mix, and put it in the fridge.
- The next morning, when you’re full of anticipation about your breakfast, grab the oats from the fridge, loosen with a little more milk if needed, and top with the yoghurt, berries and honey. Then, tuck in!
However, this is just a basic overnight oats recipe, and the joy of this dish is really that you can mix it up to your taste. Here are a few of our favourite ways to do so:
– Mix up your oats by adding a tablespoon of chia seeds before you put them in the fridge. This will make your overnight oats creamier, as the chia seeds absorb moisture fantastically well.
– Add peanut butter and cocoa powder to the base recipe, and then serve with maple syrup. The peanut butter gives the oats a lovely nutty creaminess, while the cocoa powder gives a real depth of chocolate flavour. If you don’t fancy both, just add one or the other.
– Carrot cake overnight oats. Yep, you heard right. Adding shredded carrot, cream cheese, a little vanilla extract and raisins makes the overnight oats taste just like carrot cake.
An overnight oats life hack
A great overnight oats related life hack is that these keep for up to five days in the fridge. So, the best thing to do is to make up a big batch (five times the recipe above is fine) on a Sunday night. Then you’ve got breakfast sorted for the whole week!