Dark Chocolate & Orange Oatmeal

Woohoo! I'm back! It feels great to post a "regular" post again...although I'm still getting used to the lighting in my apartment. You'll have to put up with that for a while. :)

I was a little nervous about how this recipe would turn out. It seemed like a great concept, but would they pair well in oatmeal? Orange is surprisingly bland in oatmeal, much to my sadness. It doesn't hold up like grapefruit does! However, I really enjoyed this recipe, and not simply because it was my first bowl of stove-top oatmeal in over a week. :) I was able to taste the orange, and not just the dark chocolate. Most of the chocolate recipes are pretty "heavy" because they taste like desserts, but this one is much more refreshing because of the citrus.

Something that really helped the orange balance with the chocolate was using orange juice. I've talked about this before, but I'm not normally a juice person. My roommate, however, had some orange juice, so I "borrowed" some to help flavor this. You could skip the juice and use water or more almond milk instead, but you might lose valuable orange flavor in your final product. (You can read this post to hear about my take on using juices.)

I think my goal is to post two new recipes (or at least two posts, such as round-ups or tips) a week, probably one on the weekend and one mid-week. I hope that satisfies you! :)

Dark Chocolate & Orange Oatmeal

by The Oatmeal Artist

Prep Time: 5 min

Cook Time: 5 min

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Ingredients (serves 1)

• 1/2 cup milk of choice
• 1/2 cup orange juice, or water
• 1/2 cup rolled oats (I use Country Choice Organic)
• 1 orange
• 4 tsp dark chocolate cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Special Dark)
• pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Prep your orange.
2. Bring milk and orange juice to a boil, add oats, and reduce heat to medium. (If you'd like to add flax or chia seeds, do so now.)
3. Take ONE half of the oranges and spoon each segment into the saucepan. Stir until the segments break apart and mix into the oatmeal.
4. Once more of the liquid has absorbed, add cocoa powder and salt. Stir.
5. When you're pleased with the consistency of the oatmeal, transfer to a bowl. Spoon out the remaining orange segments from the other half to top the oatmeal (like the pictures). Serve with another splash of your milk of choice and any other additional toppings (shredded coconut, nuts, etc.). If you're extra fancy, add some orange zest. :)

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**You can also find hundreds of other oatmeal recipes (as well as tons of other meatless recipes) on my Pinterest account!  You can also like The Oatmeal Artist on Facebook. Thanks!