Pineapple Upside Down Overnight Oats

May 29, 2019 Frank Mastrandrea Comments 0 Comment

Another favorite from the dessert-inspired line, Pineapple Upside Down Overnight Oats differs from some other recipes by its use of light brown sugar as a sweetener. This is a no-cook, quick-mix recipe that takes the great flavors of the original and converts them into a healthy, low-calorie way to start your day!

Ingredients (Serves 4)

pineapple upside down overnight oats ingredients

1 cup, old-fashioned oat
1 cup, unsweetened original almond milk
4 tsp, ground brown flax
8 oz can, crushed pineapple in juice
2 tbsp, light brown sugar
4 tsp, vanilla bean paste
1/2 cup, frozen dark sweet cherries (12 total)

Initial Fruit Prep

Normally, the first step in an overnight oats recipe is to prepare the oats base. But here, there are a few steps of fruit preparation which need to be done ahead of time.

First, take the cherries (12 cherries – three (3) per serving) and soften them enough so that there is some juice visible in the bottom of whatever bowl or cup you’ve got them. Whether you do this by just leaving them on the counter during the rest of your prep, using the microwave, or a bit of both, is up to you.

Next, open the can of pineapple and combine with the 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar. Set aside.

Defrost cherries until juice is visible
Pineapple with 2 tbsp of brown sugar

Make The Oat Base

With the fruit prepared, it’s time to start assembling.

In each of your four seal-able containers, place 1/4 cup of oats, 1 tsp of flax, 1/4 cup of almond milk. and a tsp of the vanilla bean paste. Next, add one tablespoon of pineapple/brown sugar juice from your fruit mixture into each to your oat containers. Then stir until blended.
A note on vanilla bean paste. If you’ve never used it before, it’s a sweeter, thicker more richly vanilla tasting product which is actually more of a syrup than a paste. It can be substituted 1:1 for vanilla extract in most recipes and lends itself to a deeper vanilla flavor.

As it can be a bit pricey (but then, so is regular vanilla extract) I tend to use the vanilla bean paste mostly in recipes where you really can taste the difference. This particular overnight oats recipe qualifies, especially with one tsp per each serving.

So while I do think this recipe still tastes good if made with extract, I highly recommend you try it with bean paste if you can. Or feel free to try this recipe both ways — with extract and with bean paste — and see what you think of the difference.

The oat base ingredients, unmixed
The oat base, mixed

Final Layers

To simulate the “upside down” nature of the dessert we’re converting, we will simply stack remaining steps in the process. No mixing.

First, add three cherries apiece directly on top of the each oat mixture. Take the leftover cherry juice (if any) and equally distribute it by spooning it over the cherries.

Finally, take the pineapple/brown sugar mixture and equally spoon that on top of the cherries. Again, do not mix, as the idea is to leave the cherries where they are and have the pineapples all at the top. The cherry juice will be visible at the bottom of the pineapple if you’re making this in a glass container.

Seal and refrigerate for 5-6 hours, but preferable overnight.

Add three cherries to each mix, with any juice
Top with the pineapple/brown sugar mixture

To Enjoy

My recommendation is to warm this in the microwave for 60 seconds, decant into a small bowl, mix well and enjoy. But your mileage may vary. This may obviously be eaten cold, eaten in its original container, or any combination of the above actions.