Chocolate Oatmeal

The first time I heard of chocolate oatmeal was when Lindsay from Pinch of Yum posted her Double Chocolate Oatmeal recipe a few weeks back.

To be honest, I shrank back in my seat, slightly flabbergasted that Lindsay said it made a great after dinner dessert. To my mind, it sounded too sweet, thick, and carbohydrate-heavy, especially after a full dinner, it just sounded way too much, like an overdose of too many calories.

It’s not that eating cooked oatmeal is a foreign idea to me – in fact, my mum used to prepare it for breakfast when I was still living in Singapore, and I would eat it because my mum always told me it was healthy and nutritious. Obviously, my mum made it the very health-conscious way – cooking oats in water with minimal amounts of sugar. I’ve also made different variations of oatmeal cookies before, so oats as an ingredient was definitely not something weird.

Let’s just say that I thought chocolate oatmeal sounded like an interesting concept, but then I forgot about it soon after.

Over the last few days however, I somehow saw many different recipes of chocolate oatmeal in the food blogosphere, and I thought “what a crazy food trend going on in the States” since most of the blogs I read tend to be based in North America. I thought it was just some kind of fad in the Western world that would pass in a while.

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To my surprise though, it seemed this trend had travelled across the globe and reached Singapore, because I saw last night in my Facebook news feed that a friend, Briony, had made chocolate oatmeal for her after-gym snack. Now this got my attention for sure.

For a food fad to be accepted by a friend from Singapore, it probably had to be good. And so, from having a lack of interest in this snack, I was suddenly overwhelmed with a crazy desire to make and eat every bit of this dessert.

Googling the web for an easy recipe, I quickly found Chocolate Covered Katie’s very alluring and simple-looking method of making Basic Chocolate Oatmeal. I had worn my coat and had my handbag in hand – I was all set to head to the supermarket to buy oatmeal to whip up this suddenly-coveted snack, but thankfully discovered that I had some extra oatmeal from the last time I made oatmeal cookies (God is good!).

Chocolate Covered Katie’s recipe was supposed to take only 5 – 7 minutes of cooking, so I decided to make it after wolfing down my dinner, with loads of excitement bubbling inside me.

In the end, I had to amend CCK’s recipe a little, probably because the oats I used were slightly different, and took a little longer to achieve the desired texture and thickness. But it turned out way better than I had originally expected. I ate it first as a dessert, warm and freshly cooked, with fresh strawberries as toppings, and then I ate it again this morning, plain and cold from the refrigerator as a power-packed energy breakfast to kick start my day.

Power Breakfast: Chocolate Oatmeal with Fresh Strawberries

I liked it better cold, as breakfast instead of dessert, probably because my stomach wasn’t already stuffed with dinner and almost bursting at its seams.

In my opinion, the cocoa powder gave an interestingly fun feel to oatmeal, which most people tend to associate with overly health-conscious diets, and it also made the oatmeal a lot richer in both taste and texture.

Now if you’re like me and have never tried chocolate oatmeal before.. I’d say that now is as good a time as any to experiment with this trendy snack. Here’s the recipe I used, slightly amended from the original CCK recipe.

CHOCOLATE OATMEAL (Makes 4 small portions or 1 medium-sized bowl)

Ingredients:

1)    500ml of cold milk
2)    6 – 8 heaped tablespoons of quick cooking oats ( depending on how thick or liquid you want the oatmeal to be)
3)    3 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa power
4)    2 tablespoons of sugar
5)    1-2 teaspoon of pure vanilla essence

Steps:

1)    Add quick cooking oats, cocoa powder, sugar and vanilla essence to milk in a pot
2)    Heat mixture under medium heat, stirring continuously for around 8-10 minutes for so oats do not stick to bottom
3)    Once oats reach the desired consistency and thickness, remove from fire
4)    Serve either warm or cold, with optional topping of nuts, raisins or fresh fruits like strawberries or bananas

Milk:

Add in quick cooking oats:

Add in cocoa powder, sugar and vanilla essence:

Cook on medium heat, stirring continuously:

Until desired consistency and thickness is achieved:

Chocolate Oatmeal: