Oatmeal Egg Baby

This isn't my recipe, of course. I stole it, remorselessly, from Shuna at eggbeater. I have been wanting to make it ever since I read the entry about it, and this past Saturday, I felt the need to make something relatively easy and not of my own devising. I have spent a good deal of my kitchen time over the past week trying, without much success (so far), to develop a recipe, and I'll probably write about that continuing attempt within the next few days. My lack of success has left me feeling a bit frazzled, and this recipe seemed like just the thing.

Anyway, Shuna said that her Egg Babies (I am not quite clear on how the pluralization works here and when "babies" is more appropriate than "baby," so bear with me, ok?) recipe was almost infinitely adaptable, and I decided to test its limits. Or so I thought. The result was sufficiently puffy and fully delicious, so I reckon that if I really wanted to test the recipe's limits, I'd have to come up with some truly radical ingredients and/or proportions.

I wanted something with at least some fiber, so instead of flour, I used rolled oats, and I added sunflower seeds, which I currently have in abundance. I substituted almond milk for the regular milk. I don't know why. I don't have an 8-inch cast iron skillet (alas), so I used my trusted 6-inch skillet and halved the recipe. It would probably serve two people, but I liked the first half so much that I went back and ate the rest of it myself.

Oatmeal Egg Baby

1 cup rolled oats
1 T. sugar
pinch salt
1/4 t. ground cinnamon
3/4 cup almond milk
2 eggs
2 T. butter, melted
2 T. roasted sunflower seeds
1 T. butter, not melted

A lemon
Sweetener of choice

Put a six-inch cast iron skillet into the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the oats, sugar, salt, and cinnamon in a bowl. Beat the eggs and milk together with a fork or whisk until well blended. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Add the melted butter and stir again. Not too much stirring, please.

Remove the hot pan from the oven and add the last tablespoon of butter. Swirl around to coat the pan.

Quickly stir the sunflower seeds into the batter, then scrape the batter into the hot skillet. Put it back in the oven for 25 minutes or until puffed and well browned around the sides. Remove from oven, cut into half (or quarters if you prefer). Serve with the lemon and sweetener(s).


You really don't want to omit the last step of lemon and sugar (or whatever) here. I ate the first half of my egg baby with some raspberry jam on the side, and it was a little bit lackluster (it tasted healthy; if I were making it for guests, I would have added more sugar, I think). So I squeezed half a lemon over the second half and then added some Splenda (Don't judge me! Just use powdered sugar or honey instead.), and the result was terrific. I think that the lemon is especially good, but you could probably go with any flavor of syrup and also end up with something delicious.

Shuna's rose a lot higher than mine. I believe the difference in height is attributable to my substitution of oatmeal for flour (a cup of rolled oats weighs a good deal less than a cup of flour). The batter was so loose when I had mixed it that I almost added half a cup of flour to it, but I decided that I'd just go with what I had, and I'm glad that I did. The oatmeal-based baby did rise, and it was plenty light; it just didn't have that souffle-like mega-rise that you would get with a somewhat thicker batter.

You don't have to put the skillet in the oven when the oven's cold. I just figured that it would save time to do that rather than to wait until the oven was hot.