On a January morning, you need dessert for breakfast. This is probably my favourite category of recipe, and the one most of my cooking falls into. I should point out that this does not mean you are ever justified in eating a chocolate orange, Magnum or cheeseboard before 12pm. Instead, it means adapting certain post-savoury classics to make them a little healthier, a little more substantial and a little more appropriate for the beginning of the day. I try and cut out a lot of the refined sugar and processed flour, sticking with wholesome staples like honey, spelt flour, oats, polenta and unrefined muscovado sugar. I like to think I have this down to a fine art, perhaps evident from the number of ‘breakfast crumble’ recipes in my repertoire.
I nearly always start the day with fruit, in some shape or form. It’s always better if it’s been baked or poached with some spices and a little sugar (either muscovado, for those butterscotch notes, or honey, for its complex flavour). Even better if you can add some sort of crunchy, crumbly, doughy topping to the mix to soak up all those syrupy juices. This breakfast cobbler combines both pleasure points to delicious effect: sweet winter plums bathed in a ginger-spiked syrup collapse into a tangy, honeyed, jammy mass of muted pink and coral, while a fluffy scone topping, enriched with golden polenta for texture, soaks up the juices underneath and turns gloriously crunchy and crispy on top in the heat of the oven. I serve this with a scoop of ricotta cheese, the perfect foil to the buttery sweetness, which also makes it a more substantial and filling breakfast.
Ginger plum breakfast cobbler with ricotta (serves 2-3):
For the plums:
- 1 punnet plums (around 8-10 small plums)
- Juice of half an orange
- ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground ginger
- 1 ball of stem ginger in syrup, finely chopped, plus 2 tbsp of the syrup
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 1 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
For the cobbler topping:
- 80g spelt flour
- 35g polenta
- 1 tbsp light muscovado sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 35g cold butter, cubed
- 150g plain yoghurt
- 1 tbsp demerara sugar
To serve: 100g ricotta cheese
Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Prepare the plums: halve and stone the fruit, then slice each half into 3 or 4 pieces. Place in a medium baking dish (around 9 inches diameter) with the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, polenta, sugar, baking powder and salt. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the yoghurt to make a thick dough, then dollop this on top of the plums in patches. Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the dough, then bake for 40 minutes or until the topping is golden and the fruit is bubbling. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then serve with spoonfuls of ricotta.