Carrot Cake Overnight Oats
These carrot cake overnight oats take only 5 minutes to make and feature all the flavors you love in carrot cake-plump raisins, sweet carrots, and tangy cream cheese-all in a protein-packed breakfast!
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Carrot Cake Overnight Oats
- ⏰ Prep Time: 5 minutes
- 🕰️ Chill Time: 4+ hours
- 🥕 Flavor Profile: All the flavors of spiced carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, but in breakfast form
- 💪 What Makes It Healthy: 22g of protein and 11g fiber per full serving, tons of gut-nourishing probiotics
- 🥄 Good For: Meal prep breakfasts, busy weekday mornings, kid breakfasts
- ↪️ Make Ahead: Designed for meal prep! Whip this up on the weekend to eat on all week.
- 🧡 Difficulty: Way easier to make than a carrot cake!
Summarize and Save this Recipe Using:
🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Sweet and crunchy carrots, creamy spiced oats, tender raisins, tangy cream cheese-these overnight oats are a healthy way to eat carrot cake for breakfast (my healthy carrot cake muffins are another way)!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- Make Ahead: Prep a batch of these overnight oats in literally 5 minutes for easy (and delicious) breakfasts all week long.
- Packed Full of Protein & Fiber: A full batch has 22g of protein and 11g of fiber without any added protein or fiber powder.
- So Easy To Make: My daughter has been making overnight oats since she was in kindergarten! I promise you can do this.
- A recipe you can trust: My healthy overnight oats recipes have been ridiculously popular on the internet for over a decade. People literally stop me on the street to talk about them! With thousands of 5 star reviews, you can trust my oats recipes.
🥕 The Ingredients You Need
- Oats: use rolled oats (AKA: old-fashioned oats) here, not quick cooking or steel cut oats-save those for my slow cooker steel cut oats recipe
- Shredded carrots: I prefer to just buy pre-shredded carrots to make my life easier, but you can definitely shred your own using a box grater or food processor.
- Greek Yogurt: any plain Greek yogurt will do, or you can use homemade yogurt, just make sure to strain it first (here's the yogurt strainer I use every week)
- Raisins: golden raisins are my favorite, but regular raisins do the trick (and honestly are usually what I have on hand)
- Cream cheese: just a dollop of cream cheese adds that tangy creaminess that frosted carrot cake is known for. After you make oats, you can use leftover cream cheese for Italian pinwheels, strawberry cheesecake overnight oats, or Instant Pot white chicken chili.
- Chia seeds: help them thicken up the oats as well as add protein and fiber, you can also swap in equal amounts of flax meal
- Honey or maple syrup: I prefer the flavor of maple syrup in these oats, but either option works-or leave out the sweetener all together if you want to cut back on sugar.
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Make it vegan: Use maple syrup, plant-based milk (almond milk or oatmilk work great), vegan cream cheese, and vegan Greek yogurt
- Make it gluten-free: These oats are naturally gluten-free as long as you choose certified gluten-free oats.
- No chia seeds? Swap in equal amounts of ground flax.
- Up the protein: Add a scoop of vanilla or unflavored protein powder!
- Make it sugar-free: Drop the sweetener and add ½ mashed ripe banana. Or use stevia or monk fruit sweetener in place of the maple syrup or honey if you prefer.
- Top with pecans or walnuts: chop up some nuts and add those to your oats for a crunchy texture.
🥣 How to Make Carrot Cake Overnight Oats
Step 1: Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl.
Step 2: Mix well to combine.
Step 3: Spoon into a jar or other food storage container. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.
Step 4: Serve cold topped with additional shredded carrots, raisins, and cinnamon, if desired.
🙋🏻♀️ Carrot Cake Overnight Oats FAQs
Most fans of overnight oats eat them cold-it's part of the convenience of a meal prep breakfast that you can just grab your mason jar of oats and go. But if cold oatmeal isn't your thing, heat them in the microwave for 30-60 seconds, stirring frequently, or in a small saucepan on the stove until heated to your liking.
Overnight oats are packed with fiber, protein, and probiotics making them a nourishing option for breakfast!
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Make lots: doubling or tripling this recipe takes no extra time but gives you lots of extra breakfasts-perfect for big families!
- Customize: add in protein powder, collagen powder, fiber supplements, oh my! You are in control.
- Wait at least 4 hours: yes these are called "overnight" oats, but you can get away with eating them after at least 4 hours in the fridge
- Sweeten to taste: some people like breakfast foods sweeter than others, so start with a small amount of maple syrup or honey, taste your oats, then add more if you like.
🥣 More Yummy Overnight Oats Flavors
If you tried these Carrot Cake Overnight Oats or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Carrot Cake Overnight Oats
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup plain Greek yogurt
- ½ cup heaping rolled oats
- ⅔ cup milk of any kind
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds or ground flax meal
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch salt
- 0-2 tablespoons honey or maple syrup
- 1 large carrot peeled and shredded
- 2 tablespoons softened cream cheese
- ¼ cup raisins
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Whisk together all ingredients in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Spoon into a jar with a tight-fitting lid.
- Close and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, but preferably overnight before eating.
Video
Notes
- Customize: add in protein powder, collagen powder, fiber supplements, oh my! You are in control.
- Sweeten to taste: some people like breakfast foods sweeter than others, so start with a small amount of maple syrup or honey, taste your oats, then add more if you like.
- Make it vegan: Use maple syrup, plant-based milk (almond milk or oatmilk work great), vegan cream cheese, and vegan Greek yogurt
- Make it gluten-free: These oats are naturally gluten-free as long as you choose certified gluten-free oats.
- Top with pecans or walnuts: chop up some nuts and add those to your oats for a crunchy texture.
Nutrition
Want to save this recipe?
I'll email this recipe to you, so you can come back to it later!
Hello!
This looks so delicious, I can't wait to try it! I am a bit confused, will you explain the following: Nutrition Information: YIELD: 2 SERVING SIZE: 1
I'd like to make one for my husband and one for myself. Will this recipe make one serving or two?
Thanks!
Hello! This recipe will make one large or two small servings. So depending on how hungry you are (and whether you're having anything else with it), you might get one or two meals out of it. Some days half the recipe is good to fill us up, but other days we eat the whole thing! We think making one for each of you is a great way to start, then you can each eat as much as you need. Let us know how you and your husband like them! =)
Hi!
So you said that it yields two but in the nutrition facts it says, serving size: 1. So if you finish the whole thing up without sharing it, you multiply the calorie by two?
Hi Kat! That's correct—the recipe yields either one large serving or two small servings. The nutritional info at the bottom of the post is for half the recipe. Somedays half is enough for us, but other mornings we're hungry enough to need the whole batch. This way you have some flexibility to eat as much as you need on any given day. I hope that helps!
These look so delicious, yumm. I am making them today. Thanks for sharing your recipes and
wonderful food photos