If you’re in need of a simple, healthy breakfast in bulk or something to feed the family over the weekend, this baked protein oatmeal has you covered. It’s high volume (filling), high protein, and has real peanut butter inside so you know it’s tasty.
And before you dive in, I’ll add that even if you just need one serving, the recipe is super easy to cut down to fit your needs.
High Protein Baked Oatmeal Ingredients and Substitutions
This oatmeal bake is as easy as throwing everything in a bowl, mixing, and baking. So, I’ll just briefly touch on a few ingredients you might have questions about modifying.
Protein Powder
The recipe calls for vanilla with added cocoa powder. But feel free to use a chocolate protein powder if that’s what you have on hand. You might add an extra 1/3 scoop to account for the loss of cocoa.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when using other protein powders is scoop size.
The recipe calls for PEScience Select which is a blend of whey and casein. If you’re using a whey-only protein powder, you may need to add a bit more protein powder or reduce the milk slightly.
This protein oatmeal bake is hard to mess up since you’re kinda under baking it, though. So don’t sweat it too much!
Rolled Oats vs Quick Oats
A lot of my protein oatmeal recipes (like the infamous Butterfinger Proats from my Protein Oatmeal Guide) use quick oats for fast cooking. If you wanted to use quick oats instead of rolled oats, that should work fine but the oatmeal bake might cook a bit faster.
Peanut Butter and Canned Pumpkin
Ah, the real MVP—peanut butter. You could use almond butter like in my low carb brownies for these high protein baked oats, but I wouldn’t recommend using something like a powdered peanut butter. You’ll need some fat to balance the protein powder and avoid a dry and tough finished product.
The canned pumpkin is there to add some fat-like properties without the actual fat and calories of something like peanut butter. You’ll never know it’s there but if you wanted to use something else, try unsweetened apple sauce, another fat source, or just more peanut butter.
To see apple sauce in action, check out my protein carrot cake recipe.
I’ll also add that if you wanted to reduce the fat even further and deal with a slightly less delicious oatmeal bake, you could use the powdered peanut butter and use more pumpkin. You can also use a full fat milk to accommodate for some lost fat from other ingredients.
All right, let’s get to cooking. If you make this oatmeal bake, I’d love to see it! Snap a pic and tag me on Instagram @mason_woodruff.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Oatmeal Bake
Ingredients
- 1/2 C 40g Rolled Oats
- 1 1/2 scoop, 47g Vanilla Protein Powder*
- 2 Tbsp 10g Unsweetened Dark Cocoa Powder
- 1/4 tsp Baking Powder
- 3 Tbsp 50g Peanut Butter
- 1/4 C 60g Canned Pumpkin
- 1/3 C 80mL Unsweetened Cashew Milk (or your choice of milk)
Instructions
- Preheat an oven to 350F.
- Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
- Add the pumpkin, peanut butter, and milk. Stir well.
- Transfer the ingredients to a 6.5" cast iron skillet or similar sized baking dish. (Different dishes will affect cook time.)
- Smooth the top of the mixture and bake for 12-15 minutes, depending on the dish and desired center. I purposely left out any food safety concerns so you can have this like gooey oatmeal or more done like a breakfast cookie.
Made this for family we had in town and drizzled some WF chocolate sauce and it was a big hit!
I was out of pumpkin but used unsweetened applesauce and it still came out amazing. Will be a go to recipe. Closer to 2 servings for me but thats mainly bc how good it was lol
I was out of pumpkin but used unsweetened applesauce and it still came out amazing. Will be a go to recipe. Closer to 2 servings for me but thats mainly bc how good it was lol
Is it okay to use an unflavored protein powder with the addition of cacao powder? I use garden of life raw unflavored protein powder. The powder has quite a thick consistency, and I have noticed that it does not mix well with a regular, morning bowl of oatmeal or chia pudding. The taste is off putting that’s for sure. But I am wondering if it would work better when baked..??? THANKS
I wouldn’t recommend it. Sweetened protein powders are typically very sweetened to mask the natural flavor of protein powder. If you do give it a go, you’ll likely want to add a bit of sweetener in addition to cocoa powder.
This was my first ever experience with baked oatmeal. I decided to try and make just a peanut butter flavor. I omitted the cocoa and mixed together 25g of whey and 25g of casein. I used quick oats instead of rolled oats and baked for about 16 minutes. I tried using the toothpick method to check for it being completely cooked but wished I hadn’t. It ended up much drier than I wanted. Next time I’ll stick to Mason’s recommended cook time 🙂
Be careful not to bake it too long!
Absolutely LOVED this bake! Used snickerdoodle PE science because that’s what I had at the time, and the PB I used was Nuts n More dark chocolate. I baked this in an 8″x8″ nonstick square pan. for about 9:30, which just baked it fully through. I ate it with Greek yogurt, and added a few extra dark chocolate chips on top!
Loved this oatmeal bake! I used Windcrest black cocoa powder and substituted apple sauce for the pumpkin. I also used Jif Whips peanut butter to cut down on fat macros. So good!!! I ate 1/2 the bake paired with a banana for breakfast and was full for several hours. Worth making for sure.
Recipe was easy , tasted great – and perfect am coffee
This has become our go to dish for a chocolate fix. I mix half and half whey/casein powder and we use chocolate or vanilla depending on what we have and it comes out great every time. The only addition we have made is to use three drops of Capellas flavor drops per batch. We like chocolate and peanut butter flavor but will be trying some other flavors eventually. Last time we made this, we ground up the oats in a food processor very, very finely but didn’t like the end result as much so we won’t be doing that again. Definitely try this for dessert or snack and you will make it a regular on your menu too.