My Favorite Easy Meal-Prep Breakfast Is So Good, I Even Eat It for Dinner

I love breakfast, but I'm not so great at eating it—especially on weekdays. Time tends to fly right by me in the morning, and I'm lucky if I remember to finish that cup of coffee and answer the email I've been staring at blankly for 30 minutes.

Whenever I can, I try to think ahead about breakfast, prepping burritos I can reheat in the microwave or setting up overnight oats before I go to bed. But no meal-prep breakfast has me in its grip like this Baked Oatmeal with Pears recipe.

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I am evangelical about this oatmeal. I dream about this oatmeal. To level with you, I wish I was eating some of this oatmeal right now. It's a really delicious recipe that doesn't veer into too-sweet territory thanks to sweetening from maple syrup and the pears themselves. You can add more fruit if you prefer something sweeter, but it doesn't need it. You can make it in about an hour and, assuming you love the smell of cinnamon, nutmeg and pear, your kitchen will smell divine afterward.

For this foolproof recipe, you'll need old-fashioned oats, walnuts, cinnamon, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, cloves, milk, Greek yogurt, maple syrup, olive oil, vanilla extract and pears. Of course, the best part about this recipe is just how adaptable the ingredients list is. If you love an oatmeal with a little more texture, swapping in extra-thick rolled oats, like these from Bob's Red Mill, is an enormous win. And there's no need to stick to walnuts if you'd rather substitute pecans or slivered almonds. You can use 2% milk or opt for almond milk to tone down the dairy. Pears are—trust me—incredibly delicious in this recipe, but it also works with whatever fruit looks best in the produce department. As long as you end up with about 2 cups of diced fruit, I can attest that blueberries, strawberries, peaches and apples all make delicious substitutions.

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Making the recipe is simple, but you'll need two bowls: one for combining the wet ingredients and another for combining the dry ones. Pour the combined wet ingredients into the dry bowl, add your fruit and combine gently. Then transfer the oatmeal mixture to a greased 9-inch-square baking dish (or whatever dish you choose) and bake for about 50 minutes.

I use this Pampered Chef large muffin pan (buy it: $29, Pampered Chef) to portion out my oatmeal before baking—if you use a smaller pan or a muffin tin, just be sure you modify the cook time and check on the pan as it bakes. It's easy to divide up the oatmeal once baked all together, but there's also something nice about having all six servings equally divvied up and waiting to be eaten in perfect bowl form. While these mega-muffin-sized oatmeals aren't quite portable the way our Baked Blueberry & Banana-Nut Oatmeal Cups are, they're pretty darn easy to reheat and eat quickly in the morning.

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And honestly, you might not be able to keep these oatmeals confined to the morning. I've been known to whip up a batch of this cozy oatmeal for a comforting dinner on a cold night, then eat it for breakfast for the rest of the week. And if you're eating all six servings by yourself, that means the recipe can cover five weekday mornings *plus* a super-convenient dinner at the end of a long day. With more than 5 grams of fiber and 9 grams of protein in each serving, this oatmeal makes a sweet but hearty meal that will keep you feeling satisfied all through the morning or the evening.

Plus, oatmeal is the breakfast food our dietitians love best. It's affordable—which sounds more appealing than ever right now—adaptable and pretty healthy. In fact, our Baked Oatmeal with Pears recipe is diabetes-friendly, low-calorie and high in calcium. My family loves it, and it looks like a million bucks when baked in a nice dish, like this Staub oval baker (buy it: $28, Zwilling), so you could even incorporate it into your holiday breakfast plans. However you adapt it, this recipe is one you'll want to make all winter long.