The Little Foodie: Cake for breakfast uplifts midweek slump

Not sure about all of you, but for me, that midweek slump has been a bit more common since, oh, last March. So when a viral video recipe promises me cake for breakfast, you’d better believe I’m celebrating on a Wednesday morning.

I finally gave in to the pressure of the baked oats cake I’d been seeing everywhere. I’m as much a sucker for those quick cooking videos as anyone. I’m not exactly sure why watching a recipe made from beginning to end in less than a minute is so satisfying, but I’ve bookmarked a thousand of them to reference at a later time.

The premise of the baked oats is simple. Take oatmeal, a breakfast staple, and make it into a more indulgent cake. All the recipes for it follow a similar structure: It starts with a mashed banana for sweetness, oatmeal, milk and a little leavening.

I’ve tried at least a dozen versions of this recipe and lean toward those with a nut butter or protein powder. Swapping in different types of milk did not seem to change the outcome, making this a vegan-friendly dish.

I prefer my cakes with a surprise in the middle, so I created the following recipe with a tasty center, similar to a lava cake. Decreasing the cooking time means you’ll have a more porridge-like consistency in the middle, which I enjoy hot or cold; cooking them a little longer will give you a more traditional cake. Either way, there are no eggs, so you don’t have to cook them through completely. The baking powder provides a little poof, mimicking a souffle in personal- sized ramekins.

While some people say cake is not an everyday food, I think these might prove them wrong.

PB & J Oatmeal Breakfast Cake

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 small banana
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• Pinch salt
• 1 teaspoon peanut butter
• 1 teaspoon jam
• Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 6-ounce ramekin with cooking oil spray.

In blender, place oats, milk, banana, baking powder and salt. Blend 20 to 30 seconds, stopping at the consistency you want. If you are looking for a baked-through cake, longer is better; if you’re looking for a gooey middle, blend it for less time so you will have chunkier oats.

Pour all but 2 tablespoons of batter into a ramekin. Place peanut butter and jelly in the middle and cover with reserved batter. Bake 17 to 21 minutes to desired doneness. Makes 1 cake.

Approximate nutritional information per breakfast cake: 450 calories, 13 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 10 mg cholesterol, 650 mg sodium, 77 g carbohydrate, 9 g fiber, 24 g sugar, 14 g protein

Variation: To make a Chocolate Oatmeal Breakfast Cake, increase the milk to 3/4 cup, decrease the baking powder to 1/4 teaspoon and add 1 scoop chocolate protein powder to the blender. Replace the peanut butter and jelly filling with 1 teaspoon Nutella, and top the batter with 2 teaspoons mini dark chocolate chips before baking.

Mariko Jackson blogs about family and food at thelittlefoodie.com. Her column runs on the last Wednesday of the month. Nutritional analysis by Joannie Dobbs, Ph.D., C.N.S.