Marion Cunningham’s brilliant The Breakfast Book led us to this extraordinary recipe. Our ingredients are nearly identical to hers, although in slightly different proportions, but we developed a technique that makes it easier to prepare—and genuinely practical for breakfast. Where Cunningham mixed her batter in the morning, making and cooling fresh oatmeal to do so, we blend dry oats with the other ingredients and let them soak overnight, eliminating the need to cook them on the stovetop.
Your palate might experience this breakfast as decadent, but it’s actually not. You will finish your serving feeling sated and energized by a delicious dish that, thanks to the cottage cheese and eggs, keeps hunger at bay until lunchtime. The pudding is also wonderful straight from the refrigerator and gives you a boost when you wonder what to eat for an afternoon snack, then remember you have this happiness waiting for you.
Overnight Oatmeal Pudding
Serves 6 (generously)
1 1/3 cups dry rolled oats (or two cups cooked oatmeal)
1/4 teaspoon table salt (the fine-grained kind that we all used to think of as “salt”)
1 1/3 cups water
1 1/2 cups milk, (skim, 2 percent, and whole milk all work; use whichever you like)
2 cups cottage cheese
2 eggs
2 tablespoons brown sugar (use 4 tablespoons if you don’t want to serve it with syrup)
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg or cardamom
Put the oats into the blender and blend them into powder; this takes our powerful blender less than thirty seconds. Add salt, water, milk, cottage cheese, eggs, brown sugar, and nutmeg to blender. Thoroughly blend.
Grease a 1 1/2 quart Pyrex or other baking dish; we spray ours with Crisco cooking spray. Pour the thin batter from the blender into the baking dish. Cover and place in the refrigerator overnight. We like to write down the baking instructions and put them on top of the plastic, so whoever gets up first will know exactly what to do (or to help ourselves in case we feel foggy in the morning):
Put the uncooked pudding into a cold oven and heat to 325 degrees. Bake for seventy-five minutes (from the time it’s in the oven, not the time the oven finishes preheating), until the top is golden and most of the pudding looks set. We like it when there is still a little jiggle to the middle. This is delicious served with fruit or toasted pecans, but it’s also wonderful just on its own. If you have a morning sweet tooth, try drizzling a little maple syrup on top of your serving, as we often do.
