Overnight oats seem to be an “in thing” right now, which sure as hell means that I have never tried them seeing as the closest I get to “being in” is sitting “in” on a Saturday night “in” my pyjamas. However, if you have seen my post ‘SW Breakfast: Baked Oats, Tried and Tested’ then you will know that I’m having a bit of an issue with eating a decent breakfast, and so I’m going to give overnight oats a try, not because I’m hip and trendy but because I need to try something.
As any working parent knows, mornings are bonkers. There is simply never enough time. Our current situation is that we are a family of four: mum (that’s me!), dad, Evie our 2 year old, and George our 3 month old. I am on maternity leave with George, breastfeeding, and still up through the night on average 2 to 3 times (*cough cough, 5 or 6 times!!) to feed him. Damon is working full time, travelling across the North West and beyond on call out as a field service engineer. And Evie goes to nursery three days a week, the other two she is at home with her brother and I.
So mornings are pretty manic and at their most chaotic on the days when Evie is at home with me too. Try showering and getting dressed with a toddler pulling everything out of the drawers, and a baby that seems to demand an endless supply of milk. It’s like they specifically wait for me to be at my most vulnerable before they start acting like crazy people!
It’s on these days that something like overnight oats feels significantly more attractive to me. Prepare them the night before? Yes please! Saves me having to eat a bowl of bran flakes for breakfast yet again? Give it to me! Will fill me up for more than 5 minutes? Hell yes! I have traditionally been of the belief that oats should be eaten nice and warm and sweet in the form of porridge, and overnight oats in comparison looks kind of like sludgey goo, but let’s be honest, nice warm porridge is pure luxury in a house with young kids so lets just embrace the inevitable and go for cold.
Slimming world’s overnight oats recipe is as follows:
Ingredients
- 40g porridge oats
- 200g natural low fat yoghurt
- mixed blueberries, strawberries and raspberries
Layer it up, cover, put in the fridge overnight, and then eat in the morning. Easy. Here’s my first attempt:
Overnight Oats following Slimming World’s original recipe
At first glance, it looks ok, and I popped this spoon in my mouth hoping it would also taste ok…nice even! But looks can be deceiving. Is claggy a word? I think it is, not of the Oxford English Dictionary kind, but more dialectal which means some of you may not recognise it. But it is the best word I can think of to describe what overnight oats tastes like. They tasted claggy. Thick, gloopy, sticky, like it was really bloody hard work to chew/suck and swallow them. Maybe this is the point, maybe your jaw burns a hundred calories for every mouthful consumed?!
Once stirred through the overnight oats turned into a claggy mess!
So, off to Instagram I went asking for some advice from fellow Slimming Worlders on how to make overnight oats more palatable, and I got some great advice from someone I decided to try for round two.
New overnight oats recipe:
- 40g oats
- 4 tbsp Natural yoghurt
- 3 tbsp milk
- 1 tbsp Agave syrup (or more to taste)
- all the berries, as before
And here is the result:
Overnight oats round 2 with less yoghurt and more milk to make them tastier…I had high hopes
Looks good right? All those berries, the gorgeous little jar they are displayed in, the morning sun coming through the window. What a shame then that they still tasted like wallpaper paste! I am extremely grateful to the kind girl who gave me the tip to swap out some yoghurt for milk, and yes this did actually make them taste slightly less claggy, but still pretty eurgh! I seem to be proving myself right that porridge should be eaten nice and hot and drizzled with honey and an extra splash of cold milk for some looseness and contrast.
So, since then I have also tried swapping out the natural yoghurt for some Raspberry and Cranberry flavour Muller Light which is looser in consistency than natural yoghurt and also less bitter to the taste. I’ve not photographed it for what is the point, it all looks the same. And it sort of tasted the same too…OK it was marginally better again because slightly less claggy and slightly sweeter, but still not great. Ultimately, off all options I would recommend this latter version using a pre-sweetened low fat yoghurt like a Muller Light. However, for this girl, overnight oats are indeed a fad, an “in” thing that I definitely cannot get “in” to.
Ciao bellas.