Apple Cinnamon Oat Mug Bake
A muffin that gave up on the oven. Oats, apple, and cinnamon, cooked in the pot you already carried.
- calories
- 610
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 136
- protein
- 10 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 3 min
- cook
- 7 min
- total time
- 10 min
- water
- 200 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Breakfast
- Dessert
- Canister stove
- Alcohol / Esbit
- Liquid fuel
- Car camping
- Backpacking
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Quick-cooking oats | 3/4 cup | quick oats only, rolled ones stay chewy |
|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 3 tbsp | thickens it into batter instead of porridge |
| Brown sugar | 2 tbsp | packed |
| Ground cinnamon | 1 tsp | |
| Baking powder | 1/4 tsp | |
| Salt | 1/4 tsp | |
| Powdered whole milk | 2 tbsp | |
| Dried apple slices | 1/3 cup | chopped small at home |
| Vegetable oil | 1 tbsp | dropper bottle |
| Vanilla extract | 1/4 tsp | optional, a small vial |
| Streusel: quick oats, brown sugar, cinnamon | 3 tbsp total | packed separately |
Method
- Dump the dry mix and the chopped apple into the pot. Add the oil.
- Pour in about 200 ml of boiled water and stir hard. You want thick batter, not soup. Add water a splash at a time if it seizes up.
- Put the pot back on the lowest flame you can hold, lid on, for four to five minutes. Stir every minute so the bottom does not scorch.
- Kill the heat, scatter the streusel mix over the top, and let it sit covered for three minutes. The steam softens the topping.
- Eat out of the pot.
This started as a twelve-muffin oven recipe. Nothing about that survives on trail, so the structure changed: no egg, no butter, no fridge milk, no baking. What remains is the flavor logic — oats, apple, cinnamon, brown sugar — cooked as a single thick pot bake.
The flour and the small hit of baking powder are what keep it from being oatmeal. Flour gives the batter body; the baking powder puts enough air in it that the texture reads as cake rather than mush. Dried apple rehydrates in the batter as it cooks, so it needs no separate soak. The streusel goes on at the end, off heat, because oats and sugar on a live flame burn fast.
Packing
One bag for the batter mix with the dried apple already in it, one small bag for the streusel. Oil and vanilla ride in dropper bottles. Do not premix the streusel into the batter bag or you lose the texture contrast entirely.
Variations
- Swap the powdered milk for coconut milk powder and it goes dairy-free.
- A tablespoon of peanut butter powder in the batter adds protein and holds it together.
- Dried cranberries or raisins in place of half the apple.
https://mealswithmaria.site/cinnamon-oatmeal-muffins