Sweeten Up Your Oatmeal With A Leftover Crumbly Addition

Eating dessert for breakfast is one of the sweet joys of life. But while chowing down on sugary treats like croffles (croissant waffle hybrids) and Nutella French toast is nothing short of a divine morning experience, we may want to occasionally start our days out with something a little more nutritious. When you have a vehicle like oatmeal, which is full of fiber, antioxidants, and protein, it's easy to find a happy medium between a dessert and a nutritious breakfast.

There are endless ways to sweeten up a bowl of oatmeal: You can try adding fruit, honey, maple syrup, molasses, or brown sugar to start. But to take it one step further into true dessert territory, think of your oatmeal as a bowl of froyo — what toppings would you add? Nutella, cheesecake bites, caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, cookie dough bites, and chocolate chips are all ways to get more exciting oatmeal. But one ingredient you may not have thought of adds a little crunch along with its sweetness.

Over-baking chocolate chip cookies is a common mistake. If your cookies are a little too crunchy to be properly enjoyed, but are not yet burnt to a crisp, why not throw them in a bowl of oatmeal? Once you crumble them up, your leftover cookies will perfectly balance out the oatmeal's creamy consistency — and you'll be left with a deliciously chocolatey, dessert-like breakfast.

If you're making instant oatmeal, all you have to do is stir in your cookie crumbles after you pull the bowl out of the microwave. If you want to intensify the chocolatey aspect even more, try throwing in a handful of chocolate chips as well, which will melt perfectly into the oatmeal. For stovetop oats, the process is essentially the same — after they've turned thick and creamy, you can stir in your cookies and let them soften a little. Feel free to throw in as many crumbles as your heart desires, but using a quarter cup of cookie crumbs for each half cup of oatmeal is a good rule of thumb.

And you don't just have to use chocolate chip cookies. Any variety that is no longer edible on its own — or even ones that are — can work. Oreos, Chips Ahoy, speculoos, Nutter Butter, and Milano cookies are all delicious oatmeal additives, but feel free to zhuzh up your bowl with your favorite cookie.