Fruity Baked Oatmeal

Labor Day weekend and the crew got Friday off, which meant I had a three-day stretch with nothing to frame and nowhere to be and my hands didn't know what to do with themselves. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, Betty used to say, though I think she stole that from the Bible or possibly from her mother, who stole everything from the Bible and claimed it as original thought.

Travis and Jolene came by Sunday for a cookout. They've been married four months now and Jolene is settling into the family the way a good woman does — not by changing herself to fit but by being herself and letting the fit happen. She brought a pasta salad that was better than any pasta salad I've had, and I told her so, and she said it was her mama's recipe, and I said that's because the best recipes always are. Travis manned the grill for the burgers, which I allowed because a man needs to grill at his father's house to prove he can, and he can. He didn't burn a single one. I was proud and slightly offended.

Clay came too. He showed up late, stayed quiet, ate a burger and two helpings of Jolene's pasta salad and a piece of the blackberry cobbler I'd made that morning. He talked to Travis on the porch for a while — I could see them through the kitchen window, two brothers who don't know how to talk to each other about the hard things so they talk about football and trucks and let the proximity do the heavy lifting. Sarah from the VA came up in conversation — Connie asked Jolene, who asked Travis, who said Clay mentioned someone named Sarah at the veterans' group. I filed that away. It's too early to hope, so I'll call it noticing.

The blackberry cobbler was the last of the season — wild berries I'd been picking along the fence row behind the house, which is not the same as picking them on a hillside in Harlan but the berries don't know the difference. Same recipe as the peach cobbler, which is the same recipe as any fruit cobbler Betty made: melted butter in the dish, fruit with sugar, batter poured over, oven does the rest. The secret is there is no secret. The secret is the berries and the butter and the patience to let it bake until it's ready and not a minute before.

The cobbler was gone by Sunday night — Clay took what was left in the dish, which felt like its own kind of good news — and Monday morning I had a kitchen still warm from the day before and a handful of berries from the fence row that hadn’t made it into the first batch. I wasn’t ready to let the season go. This Fruity Baked Oatmeal is built on the same logic as the cobbler: butter, fruit, something that holds it together, and an oven that does the thinking for you. It’s not a dessert, but it carries the same unhurried feeling of a weekend that still has a morning left in it.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 50 minutes | Servings: 8

Ingredients

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk
2 large eggs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups fresh or frozen mixed berries (blackberries, blueberries, or raspberries)
2 tablespoons honey, for drizzling (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat your oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish with butter or nonstick spray and set it aside.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, stir together the rolled oats, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt until evenly combined.
Whisk the wet ingredients. In a separate bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the milk, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla extract until smooth.
Combine. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until everything is moistened. Gently fold in the berries, being careful not to crush them if they’re fresh.
Bake. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish and spread it evenly. Bake uncovered for 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is lightly golden and the center is set when you give the dish a gentle shake. Don’t rush it.
Rest and serve. Let the oatmeal rest for 5 minutes before cutting. Drizzle with honey if you like, and serve warm. Leftovers reheat well with a splash of milk.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fruity Baked Oatmeal — The Morning After the Cobbler Runs Out