🍪 The Baked Oatmeal Recipe For Lifters

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It’s Like a Blueberry Muscle Cake

Make this fool-proof baked oatmeal recipe for lifters. Get twice the protein, fewer calories, and tons of flavor. Check it out!

Not Your Mom’s Baked Oatmeal Recipe

It’s higher in protein than the conventional version and lower in carbs, fat, and calories. Plus, it’s easy to make. You only need a few ingredients, most of which are adjustable. So there’s almost no way to ruin this baked oatmeal recipe unless you burn it. (Don’t do that.)

It’s so easy that if you make this often enough, you can eyeball the ingredients without measuring. Check out the video for a few extra tips and tricks, or just get the directions and ingredients below.

The Ingredients

  • 3 cups old-fashioned oats
  • 2 cups water
  • 1-1/2 cups vanilla Metabolic Drive (on Amazon)
  • 1 cup Splenda (the kind that’s used for baking and equal to sugar cup for cup)
  • 1 heaping cup frozen blueberries
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

You’ll also need a 9x9 baking pan (on Amazon). And you’ll need to coat it in non-stick spray. Or watch the video above to see how I get the batter not to stick.

The Directions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about 177 degrees Celsius).
  2. Start by adding the oats and water to a mixing bowl. You want them to begin soaking it up.
  3. Add the other ingredients (except berries) and mix everything together. Then fold the berries in too.
  4. Spray a 9x9 cake pan with avocado oil (on Amazon). Then use a dusting of protein powder to coat the oil. This will keep the cake from sticking.
  5. Dump the batter into the pan and spread it out evenly.
  6. Put it in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes or until done. You can tell it’s done when the top looks golden brown and the edges of the cake slightly pull away from the sides of the pan.

Note: Bake time will depend on your cake pan size, your oven, and your elevation. Also, some ovens are more powerful than others. If you usually bake your cakes and cookies at 325, then do so here too.

Once it comes out of the oven, let it cool, then slice it into nine somewhat equal pieces by cutting three lines horizontally and vertically.

Strawberry-Oat-Cake

The Options

  • You can use any berry you like. Strawberries are awesome for this recipe.
  • If you’re making this for someone who likes their desserts super sweet, feel free to adjust the recipe and either increase the Metabolic Drive (on Amazon) a little or add a bit more Splenda.
  • Feel free to add your favorite spices: cinnamon and cardamom are my favorites.
  • If you’re a nut lover, toss in some chopped walnuts.

Macros, Calories, and Comparisons

If you cut the recipe into nine squares, this is what you’d get from one square:

  • Calories: 173
  • Fat: 3 grams
  • Carbs: 25 grams (4 from fiber)
  • Protein: 14 grams

This is a big deal. Why? Because usually, baked oatmeal has just a blip of protein. And it often contains the same amount of carbs you’d get from a bowl of ice cream. And if your oatmeal has the nutritional profile of ice cream? Well, just go with the ice cream.

A conventional baked oatmeal recipe – found on a popular baking website that rhymes with haste of tome – lists the following as nutrition info for each serving of their baked oatmeal:

  • Calories: 483
  • Fat: 19 grams
  • Carbs: 78 grams
  • Protein: 6 grams

Hopefully it’s mind-blowing, but I doubt it has ours beat. And considering the carb coma you’ll be in afterward, you may not want theirs for breakfast.

MD-Buy-on-Amazon

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:white_check_mark: Pro Tip: You can eat this for dinner too. Really, no one can stop you.

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Looks awesome, will be trying this recipe over the labor day weekend! Thank you Dani and Chris…

Question: are we concerned with the maltodextrin in the granulated sucralose? “Concerned” in the sense of the added carb count…

-Razorguts

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I personally wouldn’t sweat it. While sucralose isn’t technically calorie-free when you use more than 2 tsps, it sure beats sugar. This whole recipe might add up to 20g carbs from the maltodextrin, or around 2 carbs per slice (less than one bite of an apple).

Heck, I remember when we first learned that carbs around the workout have benefits, but no one made a workout drink yet. We’d buy pure maltodextrin and guzzle it after training.

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I remember specifically mixing dextrose and maltodextrin into protein shakes, buying it from brewers…before I discovered that Sweet tarts and Smarties (the American kind) were made of those two things, so of COURSE I just pounded them after training.

…for the gains, of course.

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Exactly. The micro-brew places thought I was nuts. “You… drink it straight?”

And now people get worried about Splenda have a sprinkle of it. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the reply, Chris. And yes, I’ve been mixing dextrose and maltodextrin into workout drinks for quite some time. Before that, I would use Twinlab’s “UltraFuel” powder from the 90’s that was pure crystalline fructose. And they recommended 4 scoops (100 g!)… Sure, fructose is low-GI, but 100 g of pure fructose going straight to the liver is not a good idea…

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Wow! I’d forgotten about that. I remember in the early days of creatine when everyone was sticking a carb source (probably unnecessarily it turned out) into their creatine powders. The loading phase added something like 1200 calories per day and of course tons of carbs. People said, “I gained so much from creatine, bro!”

Sure, the creatine was part of it, but it might have been the extra 1200 daily calories helping with those gains!

Full discloser: I used it. :grin:

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Great - now I have to go buy some Metabolic Drive Vanilla…

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I’ll defer to @Dani_Shugart, but I wonder if you could use chocolate Metabolic Drive – assuming you have that – and replace the berries with something like Stevia dark chocolate chips (or real ones; you do you). Might lose some moisture that the berries provide.

Or… use those fat dark cherries and chocolate protein powder: chocolate-covered cherry flavor baked oatmeal? Heck, now I have to try it.

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So stoked to hear you’ll be making it! I believe My Fitness Pal factors in ALL the carbs/calories in artificial sweeteners, so if you track your macros, the maltodextrin will already be accounted for in the nutrition info listed above. I just used MFP to get the nutrition info for this.

But you can always double check my work and add each of the ingredients into whatever app you use to make sure the carb count is as accurate as it can be.

Be careful though because when adding Splenda, it sometimes will give the option of Splenda packets instead of the baking Splenda, and you don’t want to use those packets for this.

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Whenever we run out of vanilla, I just use chocolate, and it still turns out really good! Blueberries and oats are just as good with chocolate. So, use whatever you’ve got for now… but yes, I highly recommend grabbing vanilla for future baking.

Personal preference: Chocolate is my favorite for quick snackies, and vanilla is my favorite for recipes. I actually can’t remember the last time I drank a protein shake.

:sweat_smile:

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Hi Dani, yes I made sure to buy the granulated (IE “gram-for-gram”) Splenda for baking. Can you imagine tearing open about 300 of those packets for this recipe? At that point, I’d just go buy a real cake… : )

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HA! When I was in college I used to mix packets of splenda into cottage cheese and then add heaping spoonfulls of natural peanut butter. :grimacing: Not sure why I needed to share that!

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tried this recipe this morning, it may be my new favorite !

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It makes my day that you tried it and loved it! Thanks for letting me know!

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Made these today with chocolate protein powder (not metabolic drive, didn’t have any) and blueberries. I used monk fruit 1:1 sweetener instead of Splenda and added 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract.

Turned out quite well. My wife even likes them and she generally hates anything protein powder related.

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Awesome! Thanks so much for trying my recipe — one of these days you’ll have to test it out with Metabolic Drive. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I have about 6 pounds of protein to work through before I need more. I will have some soon.

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