What can I bake with all this instant oatmeal?

February 26, 2018 12:34 PM

I find myself in possession of a LOT of instant oatmeal. What are your favorite recipes for using it up in the form of baked goods?

Yeah, I'm tired of having instant oatmeal for breakfast, yummy fruit and syrups notwithstanding. Please: Give me your well-loved, time-tested recipes for doing something ELSE with it. I'm a fairly handy baker, so have at it. (Um, if I grind it up, can I use it as a kind of flour? If so, what then?)

posted by MonkeyToes to Food & Drink (13 answers total)

Best answer: You replace up to half of the flour with regular oatmeal in most recipes (quick breads work and pancakes work well for this). I’d say just have at it with whatever you usually make.
posted by raccoon409 at 12:37 PM on February 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

I use regular Quaker oatmeal as a filler in meatloaf, and it works great. I think instant oatmeal would work fine?
posted by cakelite at 12:44 PM on February 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Baked oatmeal is amazing - cake-like, way better than stovetop - and you can use instant oats in some recipes.
posted by Miko at 1:24 PM on February 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

If you like peanut butter, try something like these oatmeal peanut butter bars. Basically oatmeal and peanut butter, plus some flour, leavening, eggs, and fat. Because it's not supposed to rise, it's very forgiving and a good base for add-ins like nuts, chopped fruit, and chocolate chips. You don't need much sweetener at all, especially if you have sweet add-ins. Also, pretty much any form of fat (neutral oil, butter) or sweetener (sugar, honey, molasses) will do.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:01 PM on February 26, 2018

Best answer: Oats are a very versatile grain, and instant just means they are parboiled and sliced thin, but they still work like any other high gluten grain.

Run it through a blender and you have oat flour, which can replace regular flour (sort of, I'd only use it to replace up to 1/2 of the called for regular flour in any but the most chunky recipes [ie: cakes and muffins] and 2/3 of regular flour in more hearty recipes [ie cookies and hearty breads]) but with way more nutrients than even whole wheat flour. My personal favorites: oat waffles, honey oat breads, skillet cakes and chewy cookies.

Unground it can make oatmeal cookies, denser loaves of bread and used as a thickener for smoothies and shakes.

Also if you have a homebrewer in your life, instant oats work well straight in the mash for oatmeal stouts and British Ambers.

Over and above that, sub instant oatmeal anywhere you'd use regular (not panko) bread crumbs: meatloaf, breading for frying, meat balls, a handful in bread pudding is amazing.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 2:05 PM on February 26, 2018 [6 favorites]

My favorite cookie! No bake cookies. Just make sure to bring the sugar+butter+cocoa+milk mixture to a roiling boil for something like a minute and a half - too long and they get crumbly, too little and they won't set.
posted by dinofuzz at 2:44 PM on February 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Smitten Kitchen's Oat and Wheat Sandwich Bread is the bread I make probably just about every week. It's a delicious workhorse bread, and will use up a lot of instant oatmeal.
posted by General Malaise at 3:48 PM on February 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

(Oh, and it two loaves are too much for you, I split the dough in half after the first rise and freeze half. When you want to bake the second loaf, just leave out on a counter in a bread pan for 3-5 hours until it doubles in size, then bake.)
posted by General Malaise at 3:49 PM on February 26, 2018

With any dessert or pastry things you bake (muffins, quick breads, coffee cake, pies), top it with an oat streusel.
posted by Leontine at 8:25 PM on February 26, 2018

I personally prefer instant oats to rolled oats in cowboy cookie (or oatmeal chocolate chip cookie) recipes, myself.
posted by Aleyn at 10:33 PM on February 26, 2018

I made these Maple Syrup Muffins recently. They're very good, and I tripled the recipe to make 2 dozen muffins, which took 2 1/4 cups of oatmeal, plus three extra tablespoons to sprinkle on top of the batter once it's in the muffin tins.
posted by orange swan at 5:20 PM on February 27, 2018

Oatmeal Peanut Butter Balls: mix instant oats, peanut butter, honey, and optionally some dry milk powder and chocolate chips until it forms a stiff mass; it's about 1 cup of oats to 1/4 cup of everything else, but your taste may vary. Make it into balls and wrap it in wax paper twists. They keep in the fridge and are basically candy.
posted by blnkfrnk at 10:17 AM on March 2, 2018

Response by poster: Ah, that's the rule of thumb I needed--substituting instant oatmeal flour for half of the white flour in banana muffins worked really well.

Consolation prize to General Malaise... I did, indeed, make Oat and Wheat Sandwich Bread. The kids found it kind of meh. The dog, on the other hand, consumed the entire crust of the remaining loaf with great gusto sometime in the night. Oh my God, the dog farts tho
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:50 PM on March 3, 2018