Pumpkin Baked Oats (Single Serving, 45g Protein)

Single serving pumpkin baked oats blended in a blender and baked in one dish, with 37 grams of protein and a Greek yogurt cream cheese frosting on top. Ready in 25 minutes.

Nearly every pumpkin baked oatmeal recipe you’ll find is a batch. An 8×8 dish, nine servings, forty-five minutes in the oven, and a week of leftovers whether you wanted them or not. This one is a single serving in a ramekin, it blends in a Magic Bullet, and it’s out of the oven in twenty minutes.

Pumpkin baked oats are oats blended into a flour and baked into a soft, cake-textured single portion. This version adds a scoop of vanilla protein powder and pumpkin puree to the blender, bakes at 350°F for 20 to 25 minutes, and gets topped with a greek yogurt and cream cheese frosting. One serving has 45 grams of protein and 6 grams of fiber.

The texture is the part people don’t expect. Blending the oats into flour first is what turns this from oatmeal into something closer to a small warm cake, and it’s why I’ve never gone back to stovetop oats in the fall.

If you want the rest of the baked oats lineup, I’d also make my Red Velvet Baked Oats, Cinnamon Roll Baked Oatmeal, and Pumpkin Cheesecake Overnight Oats for the cold version.

Why You’ll Love These

• 45 grams of protein in one bowl. Most pumpkin baked oatmeal recipes land around 5. This is a breakfast that holds until lunch instead of one that has you hungry by ten.
• One serving, one dish, one blender. No 8×8 pan, no nine portions to get through, no Tupperware. You make exactly what you’re eating.
• It tastes like pumpkin pie with frosting on it. The Greek yogurt topping is the whole reason I make it!

Ingredients You’ll Need

(Amounts are in the recipe card below. These are my notes on why each one is in there.)

For the oats:

• Certified gluten free quick oats: they blend into a finer flour than rolled oats, which is what gives you the cake texture. Rolled oats work, just blend a little longer. Steel cut oats will not work here at all.
• Vanilla protein powder: most of the 37 grams. I use PEScience Gourmet Vanilla, a whey and casein blend, and code BAILEY takes money off. Vegan protein powders soak up more liquid, so add a splash more almond milk if you use one.
• Pumpkin puree: check the can lists pumpkin as the only ingredient. Pumpkin pie filling is pre-sweetened and pre-spiced and will throw off the whole thing.
• Egg: the binder. This is what holds the structure once the oats are flour, and I wouldn’t try to swap it.
• Baking powder: half a teaspoon, and it’s what gives the rise that makes this cake-like instead of dense.
• Pumpkin pie spice, maple syrup, vanilla extract, and almond milk: the spice does the fall flavor, the syrup sweetens lightly, the vanilla rounds it out, and the milk gets the batter to a pourable consistency.

For the Greek yogurt frosting:

• Plain Greek yogurt, cream cheese, and powdered monk fruit sweetener. Whisked together while the oats bake. The cream cheese is what makes it read as frosting rather than yogurt on top of oatmeal.

How to Make Pumpkin Baked Oats

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and spray a single-serving oven safe dish or ramekin.
2. Blend the quick oats on high on their own first, until it looks like flour. Do this before adding anything wet or you’ll get gritty texture.
3. Add the baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, protein powder, pumpkin puree, almond milk, egg, maple syrup, and vanilla extract. Blend again until smooth.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared dish and bake 20 to 25 minutes, until the center is set and springs back.
5. While it bakes, whisk the Greek yogurt, cream cheese, and powdered sweetener together until smooth.
6. Let the oats cool a few minutes, then spread the frosting over the top and add whatever you’re using. I do chopped pecans and pumpkin seeds.

Tips Before You Start

1. Blend the oats dry, first, on their own. This is the step that decides the texture. Oats blended alongside liquid never break down properly and you end up with something closer to porridge in a dish.
2. Don’t skip the cool-down before frosting. Warm oats melt the Greek yogurt frosting into a puddle. Five minutes is enough.
3. A Magic Bullet or personal blender is easier than a full-size one. Single-serving batter is too small for a large blender jar to catch properly. One of my readers, Jill, made two servings at once specifically so everything fit in hers, which is a good workaround.

Make Ahead and Storage

You can assemble the batter the night before, cover the dish, and refrigerate it. In the morning, cover with foil and bake at 350°F for about 20 minutes, or use a toaster oven at 350°F for 5 to 10 minutes.

Once baked, it keeps covered in the fridge for 3 to 4 days. Reheat in the microwave for about a minute, and add the frosting after reheating rather than before.

To scale it up, double the batter into a loaf pan or triple it into a square pan and cut it into bars. The bake time goes up to roughly 35 to 40 minutes for a bigger dish.

More Pumpkin Recipes You’ll Like

• Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins
• Pumpkin Cheesecake Overnight Oats
• Gluten Free Pumpkin Oatmeal Bars
• Pumpkin Cake Pops
• Pumpkin Donut Holes (Gluten-Free)

If you make these, leave a star rating and a comment below and tell me what you topped them with. And if you post them, tag me @basicswithbails or use #basicswithbails.