Mixed berry compote

This is a simple way to make breakfast or desserts more interesting, compote is lovely served with porridge, overnight oats, granola and yoghurt, muesli or with desserts like ice cream, lemon tart or frozen yoghurt. It’s easy to make and you can apply the same technique to any type of frozen fruit, you’ll just need to adjust the sugar depending on the sharpness. Cherries, strawberries and blueberries hardly need any sweetening, but raspberries, blackberries and currants are sharper and need more sugar, which you can add at any point while the fruit is still warm.

I keep a pot in the fridge all the time as I particularly like compote on top of my breakfast. Try making these coconut overnight oats as mixed berries go so well with it (recipe link, plus more below).

Ingredients

Makes approx 300ml

• 450-500g frozen mixed berries

• 70-80g soft brown sugar

Method

• Tip the frozen fruit into a large saucepan with 70g sugar and allow to warm on a medium heat. Once all the fruit has defrosted, simmer for 10 minutes.

• Use a potato masher to break up any whole berries, add a little more sugar if needed and leave to cool.

• Or if you prefer to remove the seeds and make a coulis, pass though a sieve whilst warm, pushing with a silicone spatula.

• It will take quite a bit of effort to get all the pulp separated, but keep going until you only have seeds in the sieve. Or as long as you can be bothered, but you’ll be surprised at how much you can get out even when it looks like mostly seeds!

Tip

• Recipes that work well with compote: granola, overnight oats, pancakes, muesli

• You might want adjust the sweetness to your taste, this recipe is on the tart side, so add another 1-2 tbps if needed.

Raspberry, mango & oat smoothie

I like to work out in the morning, but I can’t do it (or anything for that matter) on an empty stomach, so a smoothie is a great way of getting some energy without feeling too full. I’ll quickly blitz and then get on with my HIIT class!

Ingredients

Serves 2

• 120g frozen mango

• 40g frozen raspberry

• 40g frozen banana

• 400ml nut milk or organic whole

• 2 tbsp oats

• 1 tbsp honey, optional

Method

• Blitz!!

Tip

• Buy bags of frozen fruit to save on the cost, plus they naturally chill your drink down so you dont need to use ice.

• If you’re wondering why there is more mango than raspberry, it’s because the raspberry is a much stronger flavour and it takes over if you don’t balance it out.

Berry power smoothie

If you’re a regular on my blog, you’ll know that I love a smoothie for breakfast. Today I threw together berries and nuts with creamy oat milk and added protein powder to keep me going until lunch. I always use frozen fruit as it’s so much cheaper and works better in a smoothie as it naturally chills the drink without the need for ice.

Ingredients

Serves 2

• 60g strawberries

• 60g blueberries

• 60g raspberries

• 1 tbsp chia seeds

• 1 tbsp almond butter

• 1/2 tbsp protein powder (I use unflavoured planet organic)

• 350 ml nut milk (I like Plenish drinks) or organic whole

Method

• Blitz!