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With just 8 simple ingredients, these chocolate chip baked oats are light, fluffy, and the perfect way to have a delicious, dessert-like, healthy breakfast. It's filling, satisfying and can be made vegan and gluten-free. The best part? It feels like you're having cake for breakfast, but it's totally guilt-free!
Take your breakfast to the next level with this easy baked oatmeal with chocolate chips recipe. Your whole family will be excited for breakfast, and you can feel good about this fun way to start the day.
This recipe is great for meal prepping a quick and easy breakfast on those busy weekday mornings. But it's also great on a slow Saturday morning when you can enjoy this gooey chocolate chip oatmeal bake right out of the oven with a hot cup of coffee.
The secret to these chocolate chip cookie baked oats is the blender! Blended baked oats have a super fluffy, cake like texture, which just makes them so much more fun to eat.
Serve this healthy baked oats recipe hot or at room temperature. If you did meal prep and your chocolate chip oats are cold, you can reheat them in the oven or in the microwave.
You can also serve these alongside a bigger spread with this oat milk hot chocolate or raspberry smoothie and this vegan frittata for extra protein!
With only 5 minutes of prep time, and under 30 minutes of bake time, you can make an easy breakfast that your whole family will love!
👩🏽🍳 Why This Recipe Works
- Great for meal prep
- Simple, inexpensive ingredients
- Delicious breakfast option or healthy snack
- Kid friendly
- Vegan and gluten free
- Tastes just like a classic chocolate chip cookie or cake, but is way better for you!
- Best chocolate chip baked oats recipe ever!
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🥘 Ingredients
Healthy chocolate baked oats are made from simple, inexpensive ingredients. Find a full list of ingredients, detailed instructions, and nutritional information on the recipe card at the bottom of this post.
- Rolled Oats: Make sure to use rolled oats rather than quick oats or steel cut oats for this cookie baked oatmeal recipe. Quick cooking oats are basically chopped into smaller pieces so they cook faster, and steel cut oats are less refined so they are tougher in texture. Whole old fashioned oats will blend better than quick or steel-cut oats.
- Baking Powder: This ingredient helps give your baked oatmeal a fluffy texture and it helps the oats rise (like cake!) Without it, your oats will be flat.
- Banana: Ripe banana is used in these low calorie baked oats to add moisture and sweetness. It also helps bind the ingredients the same way an egg would.
- Applesauce: Unsweetened applesauce is here to help the banana. They both act as a binder and add a mild sweet flavor to the oats.
- Almond Milk: You can use any unsweetened plant-based milk or non diary milk for this recipe. Creamy oat milk, coconut milk, or soy milk would be a good alternative.
- Vanilla Extract: Vanilla extract gives these baked chocolate chip oats a richer and more delicious flavor. It also brings out the natural sweetness of the other ingredients.
- Vegan Chocolate Chips: Some of these go in the cocoa baked oatmeal and some go on top for an amazing melty chocolate flavor. Substitute vegan dark chocolate chips instead of semi sweet if you prefer.
🔪 Instructions
It's super easy to make baked chocolate chip oatmeal! Having a blender cuts your prep time down to just 5 minutes! Here's how you make this healthy recipe:
Preheat Oven, Make Oat Flour: Set over to 350 degrees F / 180 C. Grease an 9 inch baking dish. Pulse the oats in a high speed food processor or a high-speed blender until they become fine oat flour.
Add Remaining Ingredients: Add all remaining ingredients, except the chocolate chips, and blend until you have a well incorporated and smooth batter.
Move Oat Mixture to Mixing Bowl, Add Chocolate Chips: Transfer the batter to a mixing bowl and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. Set aside 2 tbsp of vegan chocolate chips, stir the remaining chocolate chips through the batter.
Add Batter to Baking Dish: Pour the batter into the prepared dish and sprinkle the reserved chocolate chips over top of the batter.
Bake & Cool: Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean. Allow the baked choc chip oats to cool for 5 minutes before enjoying.
💭 Expert Tips
- Make sure to grease your whole pan with cooking spray so your chocolate chip cookie baked oatmeal doesn't stick to the baking dish.
- For best results, don't skip the blending! That's the only way to get a really fluffy texture in this chocolate oats bake recipe.
- To ensure a gluten free chocolate chipbaked oatmeal recipe, use gluten free rolled oats.
- You shouldn't need to cover your oats while cooking, but if you need to due to oven variations, simply uncover about 5 minutes before they finish cooking for a nice finish.
- If you don't want to use banana, you can substitute flax egg.
- If you need a sweeter version, you can add more chocolate chips or add a little maple syrup or brown sugar to the batter before cooking.
📖 Variations
This chocolate chip oatmeal bake can be tweaked in so many different ways! Take the base of this recipe and add what you like to it. Here are some of our favorite variations.
- White Chocolate and Raspberry Baked Oats: Keep the ingredient amounts the same, but swap out the chocolate chips for vegan white chocolate chips and toss in some raspberries to quickly and easily transform these cookie baked oats to a totally different flavor.
- Banana Chocolate Chip Baked Oats: This is a super easy variation since there is already a banana in these cocoa baked oats. All you have to do is add some freshly sliced banana on top of the mixture before it goes into the oven. Feel free to add in some chopped walnuts too for that banana bread feel.
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal: Another easy addition, just add 1/2-3/4 cup of peanut butter to this recipe for the richest, creamiest, most delicious baked oats with chocolate chips. If you are allergic to peanuts, you can use another nut or seed butter like almond butter or cashew butter.
- Make It Sugar Free: Replace the vegan chocolate chips with sugar free chocolate chips to make these cookie dough baked oats sugar free. You can also just reduce the amount of chocolate chips to lower the added sugar in this recipe.
- Nutella Baked Oats: Add about 2-3 tablespoons of Nutella to this recipe and leave out the chocolate chips. Keep in mind that store-bought Nutella is not vegan, so you'll have to make your own vegan Nutella or buy vegan Nutella at the grocery store.
❓Recipe FAQs
ARE BAKED OATS GOOD FOR YOU?
Yes! Baked oats are very healthy! In general, blender baked oats are good for you, but it depends on what you add to them! If you add a bunch of high sugar ingredients, then your oats will be more like a dessert than a healthy breakfast recipe.
This chocolate chip version of baked oatmeal is healthy for you, because we use the chocolate chips in moderation so each serving of this recipe is low in calories, low in sugar, and high in fiber!
WHY ARE MY BAKED OATS SOGGY?
The main reason for baked oats turning out soggy is that they didn't cook long enough. Make sure to cook these chocolate chip cookie baked oats for the full 20-25 minutes or else the outside will look done and the inside will be soggy.
DO YOU HAVE TO PUT EGG IN BAKED OATS?
No, baked oats do not require eggs. Eggs are a binder, but you can use banana, applesauce, or flax eggs instead and achieve the same result!
ARE BAKED OATS HEALTHIER THAN REGULAR OATMEAL?
Baked oats and regular oatmeal have the same nutritional profile. The difference will be in the ingredients that you add to either one. If you add low sugar, low fat, healthy ingredients, both are very healthy options.
HOW TO STORE CHOCOLATE BAKED OATMEAL?
Store leftovers of these chocolate baked oats in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to 4-5 days. If you're meal prepping, cut the baked oatmeal into squares and store in an airtight container. You can also wrap each individual square in plastic wrap.
