Chocolate Banana Overnight Oats

Hello friends. I hope you are very well and have been enjoying cooking and eating delicious food. I’ve been doing so much experimentation lately that I’ve barely followed a recipe! This has its advantages and disadvantages, since it prevents one returning to recipes which were enjoyed or successful, and also means my husband says, “Why don’t you just cook something normal?” But it is certainly encouraging my creativity and making me think on my feet a lot more. This has become my new “art”, and is certainly much easier to facilitate than setting up a canvas and oil paints. Not that I’ve painted in years. But the necessity of eating certainly enables creativity, and my mind is constantly turning over new ideas, or variations on old ones.

I realised that I’ve hardly published any breakfast recipes on the website so far. I adore breakfast, although it’s by far the meal I’m least experimental with. I have the same breakfast, or variations thereon, every day. This consists of natural yoghurt with a spoonful of honey stirred in, topped with a rather large serving of fruit, usually grapes or fresh mango, finished with a generous dollop of almond butter, or toasted flaked almonds. I always follow it with a packet of Belvita breakfast biscuits, and it is accompanied by a mug of nettle tea. I am rather set in my ways when it comes to breakfast, so I’ve been trying to venture out of this little enclave and get more creative with it. And that figures since that’s what I’m trying to encourage you to do – to make cooking creative!

This yummy recipe is so satisfying and nourishing. It contains plenty of energy, plus a lovely burst of sweetness from the honey and raw cacao. It’s also a great way to use up spare coconut milk, as it only takes one third of a tin (OK, I know, who ever doesn’t use a whole tin of coconut milk?!) but if you happen to have made a meal for one and only used half a tin, you could use the rest for this! It also contains one of my favourite ingredients; frozen bananas. Have you ever frozen your old bananas then defrosted them just enough that you can cut off the end and slide the banana out of the opening? It is an experience which is in equal parts repulsive and delightful! And frozen, defrosted bananas require no mashing, they “come” pre-mashed, since that seems to be the state in which they emerge from their skin. Next time your bananas are going brown, put them in the freezer and forget about them until you want to make a banana cake, or this (!) and give it a try.

Ingredients

• 1 frozen banana, defrosted for 40 minutes
• 1/3 tin of coconut milk
• 2 tbsp honey
• 3/4 tbsp raw cacao
• 1 tbsp dessicated coconut
• 50g rolled oats
• Handful toasted flaked almonds
• 50 ml water

Equipment

• Nutri bullet or blender
• Lidded jar
• Lidded container or jar for spare coconut milk

Method

Empty the whole tin of coconut milk into the blender and blend. This will bring the cream and coconut water back together in the easiest way possible. Then remove two thirds of the milk to a lidded tupperware or glass jar to store in the fridge.

Add the honey, raw cacao and water to the coconut milk, then slice the end off the banana and slip into the mixture as well. Blitz until smooth.

Put the oats and dessicated coconut in a lidded jar and add the coconut milk mixture. Stir well until all the oats have been incorporated, then screw the lid on and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, I recommend you remove the oats from the fridge about 20 minutes before you want to eat breakfast, as eating them directly from the fridge can be a bit too chilly. Toast the almonds in a dry frying pan and serve scattered on top of the oats.

This is a great fuelling breakfast for if you have a buy day ahead. When I’ve eaten it, I’ve become hungry for a snack so much later in the morning than I usually do. I’m usually dying for a banana by 10am. When I’ve eaten this, it’s been more like 11.30am, which makes it nearly lunch time (in our house anyway!) I do hope you enjoy it too, and look out for a spin-off which I discovered whilst making this, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.

Thank you for reading, sweet friends.

xxx Sam