Pear Baked Oatmeal

I love going to brunches and more than brunches, I love having breakfast with similar if not bigger spread. Especially because I am an early morning riser, irrespective of a weekday or a weekend. Getting up early in the morning and having a heavy breakfast after a refreshing morning walk, is something which keeps me energized throughout the day.

My weekends are more refreshing than my weekdays {i know, it’s with most of us}, and demand a lot more of my energies put into trying out new recipes in my kitchen and photo shooting them. And whatever time remains out of that, I spend that with my family and friends.

Breakfast on a busy weekday would normally be fruits, granola and milk…a super quick one. No time to sit back, relax and enjoy anything better. But on weekends, I try to have something expansive, and wouldn’t even mind turning on my oven. I would sometime bake wholemeal muffins or make pancakes. And if I am in mood of having something tangy or spicy, I would turn to some Indian breakfast recipes like Poha (made of beaten rice), or Idli Sambhar (steamed rice cakes with lentil and onion soup)

Visiting my parents on weekend calls for a different genre of breakfast recipes altogether, which would include normally, Aloo Pyaaz Paratha (potao and onion stuffed breads) with homemade white butter or Aloo Poori (fried unleavened bread with spicy potato curry). That sounds laden with carbs and fats, but that’s the way of my mother bestowing her love onto her once-in-a-month-visiting son. And I wouldn’t mind that too even.

So all in all, I love my breakfast. Few days back, I came across this wonderful recipe of baked oatmeal from Heidi Swanson of the famous 101Cookbooks.com.  It’s a layered fruit and milk-soaked oats and nuts one bowl breakfast recipe, which is fast to whip up and is really wholesome too.

And I would say, it is relatively healthy too, with all the good fats, natural sugar, proteins, minerals and with complex carbohydrates. And the best part is, you could add any seasonal fruits you like in this. It’s the pear season here, all we get in name of fruits these days, are pear and apple. So pear were my obvious choice for this, as I had some in my fridge. And I enjoyed this thoroughly, reading newspaper and listening to my favorite music, with cool breeze flowing in from balcony on a relaxed Saturday morning. Could life be any better than this?

Ingredients

2 cups rolled oats
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 cup hazelnuts
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp fine-grain salt
2 cups milk
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 large egg
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 ripe but firm pears, chopped

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 190 degree C. Butter the inside of 9 inch pie dish.
2. In a bowl, combine the oats, walnuts, hazelnuts,  baking powder, cinnamon, salt.
3. In another bowl, whisk the maple syrup, milk, egg, half of the butter and vanilla.
4. Spread the chopped pear in a layer across the bottom of buttered pie dish.
5. Sprinkle the oats mixture over top of pear evenly. Drizzle with milk and egg mixture evenly over the oats layer.
6. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is brown and oats are set. Let cool for few minutes. Drizzle with remaining melted butter and serve.