Baked Banana Oatmeal

We have a lot of oatmeal. Lot. Of. It. And we love oatmeal, eat it for some meal or other (not nearly always breakfast) just about every other day.

I don't actually have a lot of instant oatmeal, however, because instant oatmeal isn't the cheapest where I shop, and so not only do I have to insure a clean pot before I begin (which sux), but I also have to hang out for something like 20 minutes just to get that dang oatmeal cooked (double sux).

I tried mixing up a big batch of overnight oatmeal to save time the next day, but this was so not a success that it wasn't even funny. The texture was just not okay to the children, and to children texture? It's everything.

This, however, was such a crazy success that it's also not even funny:

Baked banana oatmeal (it's not actually that yellow--the light in my kitchen on a rainy day is yet another thing that sux) is so stinkin' good that it's one of the few recipes in my repertoire that gets not double, not tripled, but quadrupled when I bake it. The only thing that I change about the recipe is the sugar--the recipe's author doesn't put any sugar in, because he is apparently some kind of sugar-free superhero. I, on the other hand, dust the top of the raw oatmeal mixture generously with organic turbinado sugar just before I put it into the oven. Cooking on top of the bananas and into the oatmeal, it comes out perfectly sweet.

Eat it hot, cold, or room temperature, and seriously, quadruple the recipe, because it's just that good.