Overnight oats, measured
Overnight oats are supposed to be the easiest breakfast in the world: put things in a bowl, go to bed, eat it in the morning. And they are, except that mine were never the same twice. Some mornings they were thick enough to stand a spoon in. Other mornings they were basically cereal soup.
The culprit was my “little splash” of milk. It turns out a splash can be anything between 50 and 200 ml, depending on how tired I am. So I wrote the recipe down properly.
The recipe
Recipe note · Makes 1 breakfast portion
- 40 g rolled oats
- 100 ml milk (any kind; I use semi-skimmed)
- 80 g plain yoghurt
- 50 g berries or chopped fruit
- optional: a pinch of cinnamon, a teaspoon of seeds
Stir the oats, milk and yoghurt together in a bowl or a lidded container. Cover and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, stir again and add the fruit on top.
That’s it. If the oats are thicker than you fancy, add a little more milk in the morning. If they’re too loose, use a little less next time and write that down.
Why these numbers
40 g of rolled oats is a typical breakfast amount on most oat packets, and it fits comfortably in a cereal bowl once it has soaked. The milk and yoghurt together give a ratio of roughly one part oats to four or five parts liquid by weight, which is what produces the texture I like: soft, spoonable, not runny.
The fruit is the part I change most. Frozen berries are great because they thaw overnight if you add them the evening before, and they turn the oats slightly pink. A small chopped apple or half a banana works too. I keep it to roughly what fits in one cupped hand, which is close to the 50 g in the recipe, and a comparison I explain in my hand-portion cheat sheet.
Measuring without fuss at night
I don’t get the scale out at 10 pm. Instead, I measured everything once and found shortcuts:
- Oats: 40 g is about four heaped tablespoons with my spoon, or the level of a particular coffee mug filled to just under halfway.
- Milk: I use a small measuring jug, the same one I use for checking drink portions.
- Yoghurt: two big dessert spoons is close to 80 g.
The important thing is that the shortcuts are mine. Your spoons and mugs will be different, so it’s worth checking them once. After that, the recipe becomes muscle memory.
Making several at once
On Sunday evenings I sometimes prepare three jars at a time for the start of the week. I weigh the dry oats into each jar first, then add the milk and yoghurt to each, and keep the fruit separate in a small box so it doesn’t go soft. They keep well in the fridge for a couple of days.
This is the same logic as my snack jars: do the deciding once, when you have a quiet moment, so the busy mornings take care of themselves.
Variations I’ve written down
- Apple and cinnamon: half a grated apple stirred in the night before, a pinch of cinnamon. Same quantities otherwise.
- Peanut butter and banana: a teaspoon of peanut butter swirled in, half a sliced banana on top in the morning. I measure the peanut butter with a teaspoon, not the knife, for the same reason I measure oil.
- Cocoa: a teaspoon of cocoa powder and a few raspberries. Surprisingly good.
Each variation goes into the notebook with the quantity next to it. That way, when I find a version I like, I can make it again exactly the same way, which was the whole point.