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.