Decadent Overnight Chocolate Oatmeal. I love chocolate. Chocolate for breakfast sounds absolutely perfect! Chocolate that is warm? With cinnamon and cherries? Greeting me when I first crawl out of bed? Oh my… Could there be anything better?
Oh, wait! It’s healthy, oil-free, fat-free, whole foods…and chocolate! Warm, comforting chocolate. . . . . .
Before you begin salivating and dreaming about chocolate, let’s talk about specifics: While most slow cookers have a WARM setting, the more modern cookers’ WARM setting automatically turns off after a few hours. LOW is too high for this dish, so WARM is needed. Test your cooker out ahead of time to make sure the WARM setting will not turn itself off. A great way to test is to make this during the day and plan to use it as dessert…and you can watch your slow cooker.
Molly’s Overnight Chocolate Oatmeal
Ingredients
- 1 cup steel cut oats
- 5 oz dried cherries – but dried blueberries or cranberries would work
- 2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
- 3 sticks cinnamon
- 1 oz chopped unsweetened baking chocolate (I prefer Hershey’s Dark Cocoa available here
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups almond milk
- 2 1/2 cups water
Instructions
- Add all ingredients to a 3-4 qt slow cooker. Stir well.
- Cover and cook on WARM (not low) overnight for 8 hours. I have tried this on low and it burned, but WARM was just right.
- In the morning, scoop into a bowl and add frozen – yes, frozen – cherries, blueberries, or whatever. There is just something magical about the taste of the frozen cherries that burst with the hot chocolate oatmeal.
Freeze remaining oatmeal in individual servings for a decadent breakfast later in the week.
Of course, if you want a warm dessert in the winter…then cook this during the day and don’t tell anyone they are eating oatmeal for dessert 🙂 They will think it is pudding!
Related items of interest:
- The Basic Gluten-Free Diet
- Breakfast Rice
- Test Your Health: How to Find the Underlying Cause of Your Illness
