Breakfast Baked Peaches

This week is an entire week of peaches here at Macheesmo!  How excited are you?

If you don’t like peaches, probably not very excited.

But seriously, who doesn’t like peaches?  I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t at least think they are okay.  A perfectly ripe peach, in my mind, is a lot like a ripe tomato.  They suck when they are out of season, but when they are in season, they’re one of the best things out there.  I try to eat my weight in them every year and usually get pretty close.

This is a simple dish, but one that’s guaranteed to please.  Stick half a peach in a ramekin with some oatmeal, cream, and spices.  Then bake it with brown sugar on top.  What’s not to love?

Prepping the Oatmeal

You can just stick a peach in the oven and bake it for a few minutes if you want.  Then eat it with a spoon.  It’ll be delicious.  This is just a bit of an elaborate version of that.

The oatmeal base for each ramekin is loosely based on my baked oatmeal recipe which, if you didn’t know, is freakin’ delicious.

Start by mixing in the oats with the milk, cream, eggs, cinnamon, salt, and vanilla.

If you’re an observant reader, ignore the portions in the below photo (1 egg).  I halved the recipe because I didn’t need four servings of this.

I had some dried dates on hand so I threw those into the oatmeal also.  They are completely optional and you could also use raisins or something.  They just absorb some of the liquid and give the oatmeal some texture.

If you do use them, dice them up pretty small.

Add the dates (or raisins) to the oat mixture and stir it together well.  Let this sit for about 20-30 minutes.  You could even make it the night before if you wanted to.  You just want to make sure that the oats have some time to absorb some of the liquid and flavor.

Peachy.

When it comes to halving a peach, I usually just run a knife around the pit of the peach.  Then lightly twist the peach and half of it should pop off, leaving the pit in the other half of the peach.  If you have a super-ripe peach, this might not work though and you’ll have to kind of dig around with a knife to get the pit out.

If you have to cut the pit out that’s okay too.  There’s no reason why these halves have to look perfect.

Prepping the Ramekins

Whether you’re using ramekins or a large casserole dish for baking these guys, make sure to butter the dish really well.  If you don’t lube them up well, the oatmeal will stick to them really badly.

Then add about 2/3 cup of oat mixture to each ramekin and push a peach half right down in the center.  Then sprinkle it with brown sugar and it’s ready for the oven!

Baking this Peach

If you’re using ramekins, bake these guys at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.  If you poured everything into one dish, then you’ll need to add probably 15 minutes onto the cooking time.  The oatmeal should be pretty set.

After these cool for a bit, you can serve them up!  The oatmeal is really rich and the fruit flavor in the peach cuts through some of the sweetness.  It’s a pretty awesome combo!

Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel like I just kicked off Peach Week with a real winner of a recipe.

These were just out of this world and not too hard to make!  In fact, you could prep the whole thing in advance and then just toss them in the oven.  Done deal.

Do your taste buds a flavor-favor and try this out.

PS. Flavor-Favor would be a cool name for a food blog…