White Choco Cherry Pumpkin Protein Baked Oatmeal [Clean, Vegan, GF]

Looking for a nice warm toasty breakfast that is packed full of satisfying protein and fiber? Why not try out this clean, vegan and gluten free white chocolate cherry pumpkin protein baked oatmeal? This can be an easy meal prep to make multiples at one time, or you can turn them into muffins to have as a snack throughout the day!

Somehow it is already time for the December redux post. The prompt this year was similar to the one a couple years ago where you take a cookbook and find a recipe on any page the has a 2-0-1-8 or any combination of those numbers to end the year. (Last year it was a combination of 2-0-1-6, though). (Funny, I had originally thought this was the same prompt last year and not 2 years ago…alas..how time flies)

Here is the formal prompt:

Cookbook Love – Cook from a favorite cookbook and revamp a recipe to be your own healthy version. Pick from a page with any combination of the following numbers: 2-0-1-8. Then bid farewell to 2018!

When this prompt was last used for the December 2016 prompt, I was on an away rotation without many of my usual cooking tools, ingredients and certainly no cookbooks. I got creative and found an online cookbook pdf and made some super tasty cookies that were based on one of those recipes. This is the recipe I made then:

Feel free to click on the link to check out that post and recipe! This year, I am back in my normal apartment and have all my cooking tools, ingredients and cookbooks. This definitely gave me a few more choices of recipes than the first time around. I don’t have many cookbooks, and honestly rarely use them. (Ok, basically never to be honest and as you already know, I have serious trouble following a recipe and merely use them as inspiration). This is what works best for me, but I will admit, I found some pretty tasty sounding recipes that I may have to use as inspiration in the future! (Looking at you Inspiralized, picture and link below)

Anyway, the recipe I eventually decided to use a recipe from the “Baking Without Fat” recipe book by George Mateljan.

Now, let’s be clear here. I don’t advocate for a low fat diet (unless you doctor/ registered dietian have recommended this for you for a specific reason). I believe in healthy fats and think they are a great way to keep you satisfied. I don’t believe in a diet rich in processed foods, trans fats etc. I also generally follow more of a clean eating diet (which basically recommends real whole, non-processed foods) because we should be trying to eat as much real food as we can primarily over our highly processed foods that are unfortunately abundant and void of much nutrition. Ok, enough for the tangent. If you want more of my thoughts on this, feel free to leave a comment, or send me an email and I’d be happy to discuss further.

This book I got at a book sale many years ago and was a good starting place for inspiration for my recipes. They are easy for me to transform into clean recipes and do what I please with them. The recipe I picked from this book started on page 102. It is for Pumpkin Oat Muffins. Here is the original recipe:

I know this may be a bit hard to see for some, so here is a bullet point list of the ingredients these muffins called for:

• rolled oats
• oat flour (= rolled oats ground into a flour)
• baking soda, cream of tarter
• cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger
• honey, vanilla
• canned pumpkin puree
• pineapple, raisins
• pineapple juice, water
• egg whites

Ok, so for starters this is a pretty easy sounding clean recipe alraedy. However, as you may already realize if you’ve followed my blog for a while now that this is 1. way to many ingredients for my liking (there are 16 on the list) 2. has egg whites for protein (not bad, but I don’t like to waste, and throwing out egg yolks definiately is wasteful for me) 3. seems more complicated than it needs to be and 4. also likely wayyyyyyy too sweet. So, time for me to redux this recipe.

As you have probably already realized, I decided to turn these muffins into baked oatmeal (feel free to triple or quadruple this recipe to make it back into muffins instead). I also left out all the above sweeteners, added some white chocolate chips to give back some sweetness, swapped cherries for the raisins, used pumpkin pie spice instead of all the other spices and swapped the egg whites for protein powder. Boosted the fiber with psyllium and there you have it, a 7 ingredient recipe amped up with protein, fiber and whipped up in a matter of minutes (not including the baking time). (I know it doesn’t necessarily look the best, but man is it tasty!) Ok ready for the recipe redux formal recipe? Keep on scrolling down. Meanwhile, feel free to check out what other recipes the other Reduxer’s made for this month’s challenge. I hope you had a great 2018 and here’s to a wonderful 2019.

I link up with Deborah and Sarah’s, and  the fit foodie mama’s Meatless Monday, #recipeoftheweek,  What’s for Dinner

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