Berry Oats Muffins and Cinnamon Oat Streusel

Full disclosure: I force-feed Sean oatmeal every morning for breakfast.

I wish I was kidding… we eat the same breakfast every day, and it’s always oatmeal. I get annoyed and overwhelmed if my poor husband asks for something else — even if he offers to make it himself. Seriously. I am totally mystified as to where this obsession with (and obsessive need for) oatmeal came from, but there you have it. I need to eat oatmeal every morning, and I need Sean to eat it with me.

Are you starting to understand where the Bridezilla part of this blog is coming from?

Anyway, a few weeks ago, we were out of oatmeal, and tragedy struck: Aldi was out, as well. I started to get a little Panicky-Patty on Sean, but we were confident that Trader Joe’s wouldn’t fail us… until Trader Joe’s totally failed us. All TJ’s had was this strange, oat-like mix of different grains — not the standard old-fashioned oatmeal. Reluctantly, we bought it. Sean was confident that this different, hot cereal would work… until I forced him to go to a different Aldi to get actual oatmeal. Two tubs, in fact… just in case we ever ran out again.

This resolved Oatmeal Drought 2010, but left us with this odd container of an oatmeal-like substance that we couldn’t figure out what to do with (it claims to be a mix of rye, barley, oats, and wheat… whatever). A couple weeks ago, however, I noticed a recipe on the back of the tub for an oat muffin that looked good, and actually… healthy. It used a lot of applesauce for moisture (instead of butter or oil), and had an enticing-sounding streusel topping. Sold! The oat-like substance had found purpose at last.

Except, I couldn’t be satisfied with just using a recipe from the back of a box. I went shopping for different oat muffin recipes, preferring those that contained applesauce, and found a great one on Joy the Baker. The recipe I settled on is basically hers, with some tweaks… and I kept that streusel topping from the odd oats box.

I added berries — a mix of frozen blueberries, raspberries, and marionberries we bought at Costco — to half the muffins, since Sean likes that, and both berry and non-berry versions turned out well! I think we’ve established already that I love butter, but I like that you can feel good about these applesauce-based muffins. They are hearty, healthy, and delicious! In case you don’t have a suspicious box of weird, oat-like materials in your pantry (but who doesn’t, honestly… ?), these could really be made with any kind of oatmeal, as long as you don’t use the instant or flavored kind. For the greek yogurt, you could always substituted buttermilk, sour milk (milk curdled with some lemon juice), sour cream, or just regular, unflavored yogurt. Greek is nice, though, since it’s thicker in texture as well as nonfat.

I have to say, these would make a nice, healthy breakfast on the go… if I could just let go of the oatmeal obsession…

Cinnamon Oat Streusel

• 1/3 cup oats
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon butter, melted

Mix together oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Add butter and mix well. Set aside.

Berry Oats Muffins

Adapted from Joy the Baker and suspicious, non-oatmeal hot cereal box

Makes 12-15 muffins (depends on how many berries you use – I got 12 smallish muffins)

• 1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour
• 1 ¼ cups oats
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ tsp cinnamon
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
• ½ cup plain Greek yogurt
• ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• Berries: can use fresh or frozen. I used 1/3 cup of frozen berries for half of the batter (6 muffins); the recipe originally called for ¾ cup of berries for the whole batch.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liner, or spray with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, oats, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. In a separate bowl, combine applesauce, buttermilk, sugar, oil and egg. Make a well in dry ingredients and add applesauce mixture. Stir until just combined. Fold in berries.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full, top evenly with Cinnamon Oat Streusel, and bake for 16-20 minutes.

Tagged as: berries, breakfast, fruit, muffins