Wholesome Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal: Kid-Friendly and Freezer-Friendly

Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal is a wholesome, warm, comforting breakfast. Kids love the sweetness and chocolate chips; parents love the sneaky pumpkin and other healthy ingredients (like in our other kid-friendly sneaky recipes). This baked oatmeal is a big batch recipe, so feel free to cut it in half and freeze one for later.

Photo byThriving Home

Why Baked Oatmeal?

We are baked oatmeal fanatics around here, as you may know. Both my kids and Polly’s kids eat it by bushels. We love it because it’s:

• A fast way to make oatmeal in bulk.
• Super comforting and delicious like our Oatmeal Pancakes.
• Stores for days in the fridge or months in the freezer.
• Filled with good-for-you ingredients!

I find myself making this one and the Brownie Baked Oatmeal repeatedly, while Polly probably makes the original Baked Oatmeal with Fruit recipe the most. But, all our baked oatmeal recipes are worth trying.

Ingredients Needed

This baked breakfast treat is sweet but not too sweet, autumnal (I love that word), and packed full of sneaky nutrition with pumpkin, bananas, and whole grains throughout. You likely have all of the ingredients in your pantry! Here is what you will need to make it:

• 2 cups milk
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 cup avocado oil or melted coconut oil or butter
• 1 (15-ounce) can pumpkin puree
• 2 over-ripe bananas
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 cups old fashioned rolled oats (sub: quick oats)
• 1/2 cup ground flaxseed
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Get the instructions right here!

Tip: Store Overripe Bananas for Later

If you have more overripe bananas than you didn’t use in this recipe, did you know you can freeze them? Here is the best way to freeze bananas for later. Now you’ll be ready to make Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal anytime!

How to Serve Pumpkin Baked Oatmeal

After doing a deep dive into the Internet’s best baked oatmeal recipes, I learned there is conflicting information on how to serve baked oatmeal. The two main beliefs are as follows:

Option 1: Serve it in a bowl

This is my personal favorite way to serve baked oatmeal. It makes it easy to pour milk on top and feels a bit more “oatmeal” like.

Option 2: Slice it up & serve on a plate

If the recipe holds together enough (like this one does), you can slice it up into pieces and serve it on a plate. The presentation is a bit prettier this way too which always helps my kids who are prone to judge a recipe based on how it looks.

How to Freeze Baked Oatmeal

We are big fan of freezer meals. In fact, we’ve built a small freezer meal empire including cookbooks, 1 Hour Freezer Prep, and an index of tried and true freezer meal recipes.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to you that we have freezer meal instructions for this recipe!

Freeze For Later: Put together the casserole either in one 9×13 inch casserole dish or two 8×8 inch casserole dishes (like what’s pictured in this blog post), but don’t bake it. Tightly wrap the dish in a few layers of plastic wrap or foil (or a tight-fitting lid) and freeze.

Prepare From Frozen: Thaw completely using one of these safe methods. Cook according to instructions.

More Baked Oatmeal Dishes You’ll Love

If you enjoy baked oatmeal as much as our families do, give a few of these others a try. They all work well to freeze before baking, as well.

Blueberry Baked Oatmeal

Brownie Baked Oatmeal

Banana Baked Oatmeal

Mixed Fruit Baked Oatmeal