Overnight Oats

A definite breakfast craze at the moment and an easy way to save time in the morning. Breakfast is essential to supplying your brain with fuel, kick starting your metabolism and meeting your nutrient requirements for the day. How you achieve it is up to you but I love the concept of overnight oats, which allows you to prepare your breakfast in a matter of minutes the night before.

There are many recipes on the internet but it is important not to create a kilojoule bomb with too many trimmings. The base recipe is simple. Add raw oats and milk or yoghurt to bowl and leave covered in the fridge overnight. Depending on the fruit, you can add it before or after leaving the oats to soak up the milk.

Common fruits to add include bananas, apples, berries, dried cranberries or raisins, kiwi, pomegranate, grapes and mango. Other additions include cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, lemon, vanilla, honey, brown sugar, chia seeds, peanut butter, coconut, unsalted nuts, grated carrot and cocoa.

The options for flavouring your overnight oats are endless and you can be creative as you like. If you are watching your carb load for diabetes management or total energy intake for weight loss, it is important to be mindful with all the add-ons. While an excellent source of healthy fats, using large additions of chia seeds or nuts may result in an excessive energy intake. Measure your oats and your milk, as estimation can be your undoing. Remember that the oats are raw. Your serving should be half that of what you would eat cooked oats. They will swell significantly overnight.

To date, my favourite overnight oats recipe is below but I have no doubt that there will be more recipes to share in the future.  Depending on the weather or perhaps just my mood, I may warm my oats in the microwave for 1 minute.