Mum's blueberry & lemon baked oats

This one didn't come from a cookbook. It came from a handwritten note in my mum's kitchen — biro on paper, quantities scribbled with a "×2" beside the ones she doubles, a lemon squeezed in at the end almost as an afterthought. It's the kind of recipe that never gets written up properly because it doesn't need to be; it just gets made.

So here it is, written up properly for the first time. Baked oats sit somewhere between porridge and cake — the eggs and yogurt set the oats into something soft and sliceable, the blueberries burst into little jammy pockets, and the lemon zest and juice keep the whole thing bright instead of stodgy. It's breakfast that feels like pudding, or pudding that passes as breakfast. Nobody's checking.

Ingredients

Serves 2 — halve everything except the vanilla, berries, eggs and lemon for a generous single portion, exactly as the original note has it.

• 80g porridge oats
• 280g natural or Greek yogurt
• 2 eggs
• 1½ tsp granulated sweetener (or sugar, if you prefer)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 50g blueberries
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Juice of ½ a lemon

Method

1. Get set up

Heat the oven to 170°C fan and lightly grease two ramekins or one small ovenproof dish. Zest the lemon before you juice it — far easier that way round.

2. Mix the wet ingredients

Whisk the eggs, yogurt, sweetener, vanilla, lemon zest and lemon juice together in a bowl until smooth.

3. Add the oats and berries

Stir in the oats, then fold in most of the blueberries, keeping a few back for the top.

4. Bake

Divide between the ramekins, scatter the reserved blueberries over, and bake for 25–30 minutes, until golden on top and set with just a slight wobble in the middle.

5. Rest and eat

Leave to stand for 5 minutes — it firms up as it cools, and the blueberries hold their heat far longer than you'd think. Eat warm, straight from the ramekin.

Notes

• Any yogurt works — Greek makes it richer and more set, natural yogurt keeps it lighter.
• Frozen blueberries go in straight from frozen; add a couple of minutes to the bake.
• It reheats well — 30 seconds in the microwave the next morning and it's nearly as good as fresh.
• Raspberries or chopped strawberries work too, but blueberries with lemon is the version the note was written for.

Some recipes earn their place through testing. This one earned it through years of simply being made, over and over, in a real kitchen. That's the best kind of proof there is.