Enjoy a delicious and frugal coffeecake muffin made with a hint of cinnamon. It’s a great way to use up leftover oatmeal. Great for breakfast on the go!
By Sarah Mueller, Contributing Writer
Do you ever have an extra cup or two of leftover breakfast oatmeal?
My kids don’t mind eating leftover oatmeal, but I’ve found a much better way to use it up: cinnamon coffee cake muffins!
Oatmeal is an absolute breakfast staple in our house (cause I’m all about the protein on school mornings). I love it because it’s warm, quick to make and frugal.
Living within our means is important to us and oatmeal for breakfast helps us stay within our grocery budget. While it’s fantastically frugal, it’s still a bit plain.
I’m always on the lookout for ways to dress it up and give us some variety. These muffins are the perfect answer to that goal.
Why coffee cake?
Well, they really do remind me of coffee cake. The cooked oatmeal in the batter keeps these muffins super moist.
If you’re feeling extravagant, add a little crumb topping. If it’s just an ordinary snack, they’re awesome plain.
Besides breakfast, these muffins are just right for an afternoon snack with a cup of herbal tea (here’s an easy trick to make a gallon of tea). Or pop them into a lunchbox for a healthy treat.
A muffin along with a bowl of homemade yogurt and a piece of fruit works beautifully as an easy lunch.
I’ll admit, leftover oatmeal is a somewhat unusual addition to a muffin recipe, but I think you’ll find the results quite tasty.
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter
- 1 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 T molasses optional
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups cooked oatmeal cooled
- 1 ½ cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions
- Beat butter and sugar together for 1 minute on medium speed.
- Add (optional) molasses, eggs and vanilla and mix to combine.
- Add in remaining ingredients and mix until just combined. Be careful not to overbeat or your muffins will be tough.
- Fill muffin cups 2/3 full and bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Andrina
These look SO delicious but I worry about the amount of sugar in them. It seems like a lot to be in a “healthy” snack. Do you think I could try applesauce or honey as a substitute?
Sarah Mueller
Absolutely – I haven’t tried them this way but I’m sure honey would be delicious. Applesauce might work too, but you might have to experiment. Let us know if you try it!
Christine
I subbed yogurt for the fat and 1/2 cup of Truvia for the sugar. Perfect.
Christine
Oh, I also added the 1 T of molasses.
Jo
I can’t find a print button. Is it possible to put a print button on all your recipes? I don’t have time to write down all the ingriedents and the directions. Hoping you can do this. Signed a busy working mom.
Sarah Mueller
A quick workaround is to highlight the recipe and then in the print box, you can choose “print selection.”
Erin
I’m so sorry but I don’t have that feature. The best thing to do is to copy the test and paste it into a Word document and then print. Hope that helps!
Mariette
Where does the coffee fit ninto this?
Julia
How many muffins does this make? At least 24? Im concerned about the amount of sugar. My standard “sugar allowance” is no more than 1/2 cup per dozen muffins (and truthfully that’s still probably more than I should be using!)
Sarah Mueller
It makes about 24 muffins. You could certainly reduce the sugar, depending on your family’s tastes. They do end up pretty sweet. Let us know if you try it.
Heather @ My Overflowing Cup
Thanks for sharing this recipe, Sarah! We eat a lot of oatmeal in our home as it really does help keep the grocery budget low.
I make muffins, scones, and cookies with leftover oatmeal, but I’m always looking for a new, fun recipe. 🙂
Sarah Mueller
Ooh -cookies – that sounds delicious – is that recipe on your blog?
Summer
These muffins look great! I always have leftover oatmeal!
Kristen Smith
Looks yummy! I love to do the same with leftover oatmeal. I like using it in the sourdough baking I do. It’s so good!
Marcelina
Hi Kristen. Could you expound how do you use it with sourdough recipes? I’m interested to know! 🙂
Cathy
Yes, can you share a recipe?
Pamela
Does it matter what kind of oatmeal? I only use steel cut oats since I don’t like the texture of others cooked oatmeal.
Griffin
Steel cut oats work, that’s what I used and they were delicious!
Jody
Just made these and substituted coconut oil for the butter, used only 3/4 cup of brown sugar (eliminating the molasses) also used leftover soaked oatmeal. They are moist and delicious! Thanks for the recipe 🙂
Audra
I tried this recipe last night because I had a lot of oatmeal leftover from breakfast yesterday. I was glad to read in the comments that others had substituted coconut oil for butter and a stevia blend for the sugar, since I was planning to make those substitutions. (I used Pyure stevia blend). I was trying to cut the carb load down just a little more by subbing 1/2 cup of the flour with almond flour. My kids all ate the muffins, which says a lot, but I found they had a tiny bit of a bitter aftertaste, probably from the almond flour.
Todd
bitter can be from stevia as well
Weaver
Thanks for sharing this.. I had a whole lot of cooked oatmeal left while babysitting a bunch of children who love love loved oatmeal.. so thought.. pancakes.. just added some eggs, flour, wee bit of sugar and baking powder .. then enough milk to just make them kind of pancake like. I guessed at amounts.. they wanted them for every meal!! Thought you might like to try that out.
Boomdog02
Hi: I just want to tell you that these are fantastic! In a time when we struggle to find healthy things to eat for breakfast, these are a godsend! I made a couple of alterations..I like higher fiber so I added 1 cup of Fiberone cereal soaked until soft in 1/2 cup skim milk. I used Agave syrup instead of sugar, and coconut oil instead of butter. They freeze really well and when I reheat and toast them…it smells like cinnamon toast in the house!
Erin
Sounds delicious!
Debbie Ott
These sounded really good but I’m a vegan so I decided to try some subs. I also wanted to avoid coconut oil which I could see being a great butter substitute, but my daughter in law is allergic to it.
Butter sub: a combination of olive oil (extra virgin) and almond butter to equal the same amount of butter
Sugar sub: used organic cane sugar
Molasses: used blackstrap molasses
Eggs: 3 flax eggs (Each flax egg is 1 teaspoon of flax seed, grind it and mix it with 2 tsps water, then let it sit 5 – 10 minutes to thicken. 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon, so I ground 1 tablespoon of flax seed)
Vanilla: no sub
Oatmeal: I only had 1 cup leftover (I love oatmeal, lol)
Dry ingredients as indicated except I used organic spelt flour and rounded up the tsp of baking powder.
I added 1/2 cup of cacao nibs (I also like chocolate)
I mix up the flax eggs first and let them sit.
Meanwhile I mixed up all the wet ingredients (except the flax eggs) with the oatmeal and the cane sugar and then added the cacao nibs. They need to soften up and they will absorb the sweetness from the sugar. They’re pure raw chocolate and quite bitter and crunchy)
I mixed up the dry ingredients and then oiled the muffin tin. I use Camelina oil from 3 Farmers in Saskatchewan Canada for this. It has a very high smoke point. At the moment it’s also expensive as it’s a fairly new oil.
Mix in the flax eggs with the oatmeal, then add wet ingredients to dry ingredients to combine and spoon into the muffin tin. I made 12 with this recipe but my muffin tin cups are larger than some.
Bake until the tops are firm. (350 F)
Let them sit in the pan about 5 minutes to let them pull away a little from the pan. Remove them carefully. They will firm up more once they’re cooled a little.
I was very pleased with the result. The tops have a nice slight crunch to them, pleasantly sweet and very much like a coffee cake texture. Using the flax eggs sounds like extra work but it takes about as long as cracking the eggs into the bowl once you get used to doing it. I use a nut grinder and it takes about 10 secs to grind the seeds.
I added frozen organic blueberries too.
I’m not sure how many vegans visit your page but thought this might help for those who are contemplating it.
Good luck. 🙂
Laura Ward
That’s so cool! I never heard of flax eggs. The doc I work for is vegan and gluten-free. Gotta try this and share with my office!
Sarah
I sometimes make pancakes with leftover oatmeal! I add some eggs and baking soda/powder and melted butter and blend or mix well and fry in hot griddle. Sometimes have to play with the ingredients to get it right texture maybe add a bit of flour but I don’t use a recipe. Just wing it! ?
Sarah
I’m excited to try your muffin recipe! We get tired of oatmeal everyday but it is what we can afford! Sometimes adding different fruit or just baking it helps change it up. Thanks!
Emily
This has become a go-to recipe for us, delicious muffins without expensive add-ins! I do always make the following adjustments: I use melted butter or a light flavored oil so that i don’t have to bother with creaming the butter and sugar. i use only 3/4 to 1 cup of loosely measured brown sugar instead of the white sugar+molasses (they are still quite sweet). I use 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup of all purpose. I increase the cinnamon slightly and omit the vanilla. Oh, and we call them “kelp cakes” because they are the same shape as the snacks in the children’s show Octonauts 😂Thanks for a dependable recipe!
Wendy
I just made these and changed things up quite a bit. Used plant-based butter, flax egg, whole wheat flour, only 1 cup of coconut sugar, and threw in a handful of chocolate chips. Really awesome.
Sandy Byrd
I made these this morning. I used leftover steel-cut oats, 3/4 Cup of monk fruit sweetener instead of sugar, and lessened the butter and added apple sauce. When I mixed in the dry ingredients the batter was very thick so I added whey from my kefir. They took longer to bake -about 24 minutes. They tasted great and my family loved them.
Shaelin
Hi! These are tasty and simple. I used 3/4 C brown sugar instead and added two T of greek yogurt for extra moisture. They came out yummy and malty. I had to cook mine for an extra 10 minutes otherwise the tops were still gooey. Don’t anticipate a “Wow!” factor if you lessen the sugar like me. I don’t reccomend skipping out on the molasses. It adds a lot of flavor. Thanks for sharing your methods, Erin!
Aimee
Scones ?! I want that recipe.