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Like Breakfast in a Ball

I don’t only make cake and cookies. Sure, I mostly make those, but I also…

I don’t only make cake and cookies.

Sure, I mostly make those, but I also cook actual food (depending on if the SO’s home or not, I might even cook as many as three times in a week!), and while I love my sweet stuff, I also have half an eye for healthy food the rest of the time. This is less a “because I should”, and more because lots of stir-fries and interesting salads give me better energy and more happies than cheese on toast or marmite on toast or … toast, which are my general not-cooking go-toes (to’s? Tos? Toes seems right, yet not).

However, I’ve recently gone off breakfast.

I know, I don’t know how that works either, as breakfast (to me, at least) is more a habit than a meal. I always have bananas about the place, so while they’re green I have them with muesli. As soon as they display the slightest hint of ripeness (I can’t stand ripe bananas), they become smoothies or are cooked into porridge. Breakfast, sorted.

weetbix breakfast balls, bliss balls, breakfast, snacks, recipes

My breakfast never looks this good, however. Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

But a few weeks ago, I just went off the whole thing. I couldn’t face one more bowl of banana-based goodness, or even a smoothie, which always feels like a treat. I tried toast, but that just makes it seem like I’m having an early lunch, and then my whole meal set-up gets a bit confused. Although, since I discovered the weird joys of sourdough, it is really nice. Just not every day.

I suppose I could have eggs, but I have a strange relationship with eggs. I like having them hard-boiled on salad, but otherwise I don’t eat them much. Not that I don’t like them, exactly, just that the idea never really comes up, except about once every few months, when I really want them and nothing else will do. I have a similar relationship to ice cream, minus the salad bit.

I thought about making muesli bars/flapjacks/granola bars/whatever those things are called, but most recipes seem to have a lot of sugar in them, which I’d rather have in cake form. And I know from experience that the ones that don’t can be pretty uninteresting. And then I started wondering about bliss balls.

weetbix breakfast balls, bliss balls, breakfast, snacks, recipes

Pretty bliss balls! Image by silviarita from Pixabay

For those that haven’t tried them, these are tasty little treats packed with dried fruit and nuts. They tend to rely on the dried fruit to hold everything together, so not much extra sugar, but a) dried fruit is still really sugary (you get the extra fibre with it, but it’s still sugar), and b) they’re really expensive to make once you’ve got enough nuts and fruit in there. Plus, I like my oats. I even put them in smoothies.

But then I remembered that the SO had left a box of Weetbix (or Weetabix, if you’re from the UK and insist on an extra syllable there for some reason) in the cupboard. He tends to buy them about every six months, has one bowl, then remembers why they’re awful (either entirely dry, or entirely soggy, and any leftovers set so hard in the bowl that you could lay foundations with them). Anyhow, as a kid in NZ, Weetbix (no extraneous a there) was, for some perverse reason, what we all seemed to eat, and also the basis for some half-remembered chocolate biscuit-y thing that I went in search of.

weetbix breakfast balls, bliss balls, breakfast, snacks, recipes

Hey. Not bad for Weetbix, right?

I didn’t find it, but I did find this recipe for a rather healthier version, which I’ve tweaked a bit to make it into some surprisingly tasty balls that, with a generous serving of fruit on the side, will do me until I remember how to eat breakfast again. They’re not super-healthy, but they’re not bad, and definitely better than half the breakfast cereals out there. Just try and leave them for a few days, at which point the fruit flavour starts to overtake the Weetbix flavour and makes them much nicer.

Also, I wasn’t going to roll them in icing sugar, but after taking the first lot of photos I decided I should. They are … not photogenic in their natural state …

weetbix breakfast balls, bliss balls, breakfast, snacks, recipes

Yeeah. I got as far as writing this blog before I realised that this photo may not be entirely appetising…

All that said – here they are. Best use of Weetbix ever.


Weetbix Balls

  • 4 Weetbix/Weetabix biscuits
  • 1 cup/190g-ish of dried fruit, soaked in hot water for 20 minutes or so (I added coffee) and drained
  • 1/2 cup/75g-ish mixed nuts (great opportunity to use up all the out-of-date nuts I seem to accumulate)
  • 1/2 cup/50g-ish dessicated coconut
  • 4 tbsp/30g cocoa
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • generous pinch of salt
  • spices to taste – I went with some nutmeg and cinnamon, but whatever takes your fancy

Chuck everything in a food processor and let it do its thing until the whole lot starts to clump together. If, after a few minutes, it’s not coming together, add a few splashes of the liquid from soaking the fruit.

Once it’s done, you should be able to squeeze a scoop into a ball that holds together easily. If it’s too wet, add some more coconut or Weetbix. Too dry, add a splash more liquid. If you want them to be a little sweeter, add honey or any syrupy sweetener (such as agave or golden syrup) to the mix.

Roll into balls to suit your preference (I did mine into about a heaped tablespoon, as that seemed good for snacking on), then you can either roll them in extra coconut or chopped nuts to make them pretty, or just leave as is. If taking photos, I definitely recommend the former.

Fridge until ready to eat – as mentioned above, the longer you leave them, the more the other flavours overtake the Weetbix. Which, in my book, is a good thing.

weetbix breakfast balls, bliss balls, breakfast, snacks, recipes

Now over to you, lovely people – what’s your breakfast go-to? Or are you a no-breakfast person? Let me know below!

breakfast balls, recipes, weetabix, weetbix

  1. Carolyn says:

    I’m not to bothered by breakfast things but I do enjoy a selection of nuts and dried fruit, especially apricots and prunes, for a zing. (No Weetabix as it gives me gip and oats are much nicer). I usually alternate between a large orange or kefit yoghurt containing nuts and dried fruit. As an occasional special treat I have a slice of toast and Marmite. Lots of tea is essential.

    1. Kim Watt says:

      I LOVE prunes, but I tend to have no self-control and eat more than is sensible. And I always like the idea of yoghurt, but it’s one of those foods that I’ll eat a little of, then become immediately bored with it. Most odd. Toast and Marmite is, obviously, glorious, and tea vital!

      1. Carolyn says:

        Even worse – I love figs as well as prunes – interesting but dodgy

        1. Kim Watt says:

          That does sound dangerous. It’s always those breakfast buffets at B&Bs that get me, with all the dried fruit laid out, just begging to be had…

  2. A.S. Akkalon says:

    These look way too special for my breakfast (also, much less dodgy once they get dressed). Sometimes I remember to have breakfast – rolled oats, a cereal we made that’s mostly nuts, toast, eggs on toast, or a big fry-up if it’s the weekend and we’re feeling extravagant. Now I’m hungry…

    1. Kim Watt says:

      I can’t believe I took all the photos and started putting them in the blog before I realised just how dodgy they looked…

      The last fry-up I had was for dinner, for some reason. I think I’d just run out of almost everything else and it seemed like a good plan. Many of my meals start this way…

      1. A.S. Akkalon says:

        Running out of everything else is a great reason to eat some foods. What I wonder is why we buy them in the first place. 🙂

        1. Kim Watt says:

          Optimism, I think. Or I know that’s why I have a whole lot of mysterious spices…

  3. sharon says:

    Do LOVE the DRAGONS have all you wrote about then. Could use some more, When your ready too.

    1. Kim Watt says:

      Aw, thank you so much! That’s so lovely to hear <3 I'm actually working on the next book at the moment - all going well it'll be with you in November!

  4. linda sandve says:

    I live in the United States so i dont know what Weetabix are. Any good suggestions?
    love those dragons and Alice has my vote.

    1. Kim Watt says:

      I feel Alice would definitely whip things into shape alarmingly quickly… And I’m so happy to hear you love the dragons! Yay!

      I’ve had a nose about online, and apparently Weetabix are in some supermarkets in the US, but aren’t as popular as in the UK and NZ/Australia (sensible!). I’ve checked with the SO, him being the Weetbix eater around here, and he thinks Shredded Wheat would be a good substitute. I hope that helps!

    2. Carolyn says:

      I find Shredded Wheat dreadful – like eating shredded cardboard. Trader Joes does Weetabix, I think. It’s different because it is crispy and unsweet

      1. Kim Watt says:

        Thank you! Shredded Wheat sounds even worse than Weetabix… 😉

  5. Mike Harvey says:

    Breakfast for me is usually ‘porridge’. I put it in inverted commas because I doubt that an self respecting Scot would recognise it as such these days. It started off conventionally enough but then I started adding fruit and seeds and stuff. One day, I forgot to add the oats so now it’s definitely not porridge but I don’t know what else to call it. For anyone interested the recipe at present is:

    1 cup frozen berries
    1 cup homemade oat milk
    1 tablespoon ground linseeds
    1 tablespoon ground mixed seeds
    1 tablespoon cacao
    1/4 teaspoon turmeric (I think it’s 1/4 teaspoon, it’s the second smallest of my measuring spoons)
    a generous grind of pepper
    1 tablespoon or so nutritional yeast flakes
    1 very generous tablespoon peanut butter
    1 banana (preferably ripe, I’m not one of those weirdos who eat green bananas)

    Recently I’ve started leaving out the peanut butter and banana and have them later as a snack.

    If it’s warm enough instead of cooking up the above I’ll turn it into a smoothie instead.

    As for go-toes, my toes very rarely go far these days.

    1. Kim says:

      Oh, my Scottish grandmother would be very keen that you used those quotation marks, and also preferably desisted from describing such a monstrosity as porridge… 😉 I, on the other hand, think it sounds rather good! I tend to use my nasty ripe bananas in smoothies, but when it’s cold I do like cooking them up in porridge. Just lovely!

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