Healthy Baked Apple Oatmeal
This post contains affiliate links. Read our disclosure policy.
This Healthy Baked Apple Oatmeal is perfect for breakfast! With oats, maple syrup, and diced apples this is a delicious baked oatmeal recipe.
Warm apples, hearty oatmeal, crunchy pecans.. what’s not to love about this easy baked oatmeal?
Gluten free, delicious, and simple to make – baked oatmeal is hands down one of our absolute favorite healthy breakfast recipes (which is why we have so many versions! Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal, Chocolate Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal, Blueberry Baked Oatmeal to name a few!)
Our favorite thing about baked oatmeal is that instead of having to stand by the stove and watch your breakfast, all the oatmeal ingredients get tossed together and baked in the oven for a simple meal!
This is a great recipe made with only 11 ingredients in under an hour and is easy to meal prep for the week and have for breakfast or snacks!
liz’s top tips for healthy baked oatmeal
- Meal prep friendly – Bake once, eat all week for breakfast. Rather than cleaning a sticky pan every morning, you’ll only have 2 dishes to wash! You can even enjoy it warm or cold!
- You can double the recipe and freeze these in individual portions for a quick reheated breakfast right out of your freezer!
Ingredients
Substitutions
Fresh Apples vs Canned Apples: Fresh apples work best in this recipe. We don’t recommend using canned apples. We love gala, fuji, or pink lady apples for this recipe.
Fruit substitutions: Baked oatmeal is pretty flexible and you can make a lot of substitutions to it. You can sub in any type of fruit or berry (bananas, pears, peaches) in this recipe for the apples. I’d check out this Chocolate Peanut Butter Baked Oatmeal or Healthy Blueberry Baked Oatmeal if you’re looking for something a little more decadent!
Maple Syrup: You can sub honey for maple syrup or agave. I have not tried this with stevia so I’m not sure how that would work. I tested this recipe with honey – both were delicious!
Vegan Baked Oatmeal: Sub egg for one flax egg, sub honey for maple syrup, make sure to use a dairy free chocolate chip
Gluten Free: make sure you’re using gluten free certified rolled oats.
Milk: You can use any type of milk in this recipe. Regular dairy/non dairy will work! Try our homemade Walnut Milk or Almond Milk.
Optional add ins: chopped nuts, chocolate, shredded coconut, or more fresh fruit would be delicious.
Steel Cut Oats: You can use steel cut oatmeal in this recipe. Use 1 cup of steel cut oats and 2 cups of liquid/milk. We have a Baked Steel Cut Oatmeal recipe that you can also follow!
Rolled Oats vs Quick Oats-Quick Cook Oats: I have not tried this with quick cook oats and wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t think that it will hold up/cook correctly with the smaller oats.
Baked Oatmeal Cups: I haven’t tried baking these in muffin cups but I think it would work! The only thing I would say is it will be harder to clean up and it might stick to a muffin tin. I would grease the muffin tins or use these silicone muffin liners. You can bake for a little less time.
Nuts: A 1/2 cup of chopped pecans or chopped walnuts would be a great addition to this recipe.
How to make Healthy Baked Oatmeal
- Mix all your ingredients together and pour into a greased 8×8 baking dish.
- Bake at 350° for 35-40 minutes until solidified. Cool, slice, add a drizzle of maple syrup and enjoy!
Pretty much any apple will work in this recipe. The best apples for baking are Pink Lady apples. They’re a little sweet and a little tart so I find them perfect in baking recipes!
Braeburn or Honeycrisp are also delicious and hold up well. Really – any apple will work in this recipe! We don’t recommend using Granny Smith or other tart apples in this recipe. If you’re looking to learn more about baking/apples check out this post goes in depth on the best apples for baking.
How to serve
This Healthy Baked Oatmeal is a complete meal in itself, but you can serve it with your favorite toppings. I like to serve it with greek yogurt. You can also add maple syrup if you’d like. It’s also delicious with Egg Muffins or Egg White Frittata.
Can I Make this in advance?
Yes you can make baked oatmeal in advance! We would recommend baking, cooling and reheating this, rather than letting the oat mixture sit overnight.
This oatmeal bake also reheats really well so feel free to bake it and then just pop it in the microwave or oven when ready to eat.
If you’d like to prep the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately for the batter that would work fine, but don’t mix your batter and leave it in the refrigerator overnight as it might absorb all the liquid.
Storage options
Storing: Do not store this healthy baked oatmeal at room temp. It likely will get moldy or stale if you don’t refrigerate it. This baked oatmeal will last in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Freezing baked oatmeal: Bake, slice and freeze your oatmeal. You can wrap this in individual portions to make it easier, allow slices to freeze and then put them in a ziploc bag or airtight container so they don’t stick together. Baked oatmeal will last about 3 months in the freezer.
Oatmeal bake does need to be refrigerated. It will get moldy if left on the counter because of the moisture and because there are no preservatives in the oatmeal.
How to reheat
You can easily reheat apple baked oatmeal! This oatmeal is great when microwaved or warmed in a toaster oven.
Every microwave and toaster oven will be a little bit different but it should be warmed through in under 1 minute in the microwave
Other healthy oatmeal recipes:
If you love oatmeal check out these other Healthy Oatmeal Breakfast Recipes. Here are some of our favorite healthy recipes that use oatmeal.
Healthy Baked Apple Oatmeal
Ingredients
- 2 cups old fashioned rolled oats
- 1 ½ cups almond milk
- 1 cup diced apples
- ¼ cup chopped pecans
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 beaten egg
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and prepare a greased 8×8 oven safe baking dish.
- In a large mixing bowl, add all of. the ingredients. Stir until combined.
- Pour the batter into the prepared greased 8×8 pan – it will look like there is too much liquid, but it will absorb, don't worry!
- Bake the oatmeal uncovered for 35-40 minutes at 350 degrees F, until the top is golden brown and the milk is completely absorbed. Enjoy warm or cold!
- Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Do not store this healthy baked oatmeal at room temp. It likely will get moldy or stale if you don't refrigerate it. This baked oatmeal will last in the refrigerator for up to a week.
Used coconut milk and added butter instead of olive oil and 1 tsp of vanilla. It was delicious!
The recipe could use a pinch of salt
This is my go to now if I need to take a breakfast type food for any covered dish. We did a breakfast for my daughter’s basketball team, so I volunteered to bring the Baked Oatmeal. Everyone knows I am going to bring healthy food (no junk food in this house!), and this dish was well received. I served it with real Maple Syrup on the side.
It was bland for me. I think that is because my other baked oatmeal recipe is sweeter. I did use heaping measurements of the cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger and pure maple syrup but it just didn’t work for me.
Sounds like your other recipe has a lot more sugar in it. Sorry you weren’t a fan!
Is there a way to make it higher protein?
I’ve added a scoop of protein powder to it while baking it but it changes the taste & texture a bit.