I love chocolate.  But chocolate for breakfast somehow felt wrong…until I found this recipe on Pinterest.  Then all of a sudden, I thought of that Bill Cosby sketch where he fed his kids chocolate cake for breakfast.  Eggs!  It has eggs!  And milk!  It has milk!  It always makes me smile when his kids turn on him as soon as mom comes down the stairs.  

So this recipe is my Bill Cosby chocolate cake.  I will stand behind the fact that it is mostly healthy…and my kids feel like they’re getting away with something!

Ingredients:
1 cup of steel cut oats
4 cups of water
3 tablespoons of cocoa powder (mine is incredibly black because I used black cocoa powder from Frontier.  It’s a bit more pricey, but it makes everything so much better!)
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 tablespoons of honey
2 tablespoons of sugar
Top with chocolate chips.  Don’t skip this part.  It’s what makes the dish truly taste sinful!

Directions:

Spray the inside of the crock pot with non stick spray.  Then add the steel cut oats and the remaining ingredients through sugar.  Give it all a good stir.  Set it on low and cover.  Turn it on right when you go to bed so it doesn’t cook too long.  When you wake up, be prepared for deliciousness!

I have also made this on the stovetop.  But because I don’t have all day, I used old fashioned rolled oats for that version.  It was spectacular.  Bring the water to a boil, then add all the rest of the ingredients and cook about 5 min until it thickens.  I do find, however, that because the ratio of old fashioned oats to water is different, I need to use 2 cups old fashioned oats to make this work!

So if your crockpot cooks hot and you don’t have good luck with oats in it,  or you just need to eat this in the next 15 minutes, try it on the stovetop.  It’s just as good and only adds a few minutes to your morning.  I usually measure all the ingredients out into a covered bowl the night before and put the water in the pot with a lid on it when I make something like this for breakfast.  It drastically reduces your time spent in the morning and makes the go-to cereal less appealing.