You know what they say: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I don’t totally agree with this (my day is so much better with a good and healthy lunch as the main meal!), but I do see the benefits… and as we have a bed & breakfast, of course, we have to make sure our guests not only get a comfy bed, but a copious breakfast as well.

Every morning, I bake my own bread. I cheat a bit as I use a super easy overnight recipe that just requires me to mix it at night (no kneading) and put it in the oven in the morning… Still, about half of our guests have asked me for the recipe, and a few actually requested a bread-baking workshop! Happy to oblige, of course.

Bread alone isn’t going to cut it though: I make sure we’ve got fresh and homemade jams and marmalades (often made by friends and neighbors…. Still, homemade by them). There’s cheese and charcuterie, yogurt and cereals, fruit and madeleine cakes (homemade by me, of course).

The part of breakfast I have the most fun with though is making “breakfast bites”. I look at what I’ve got lying around, think of my guests’ possible dietary restrictions, and about 30 minutes later they’ve got something totally new and original on their plates.

Last week I got super inspired to make pumpkin bites after watching a video and reading a recipe for pumpkin oat cookies. I happened to have a jar of squash bits in the fridge (I used half of a squash a few days before in a pumpkin-chickpea curry, and put the rest in a jar). I didn’t have all of the ingredients and like to do things slightly different than instructed, so I tweaked the original recipe a bit. The results are amazing, and I think the bites would keep well for a few days in the fridge… they’ve never survived that long yet though.

Ingredients For 12 Pumpkin Oats Breakfast Bites:

• 180 gram (2 cups) of rolled oats
• A hand full of pumpkin seeds
• 2 tablespoons of chia seeds
• 75 gram (1/4 cup) honey
• 50 gram (1/4 cup) butter
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• a pinch of salt
• about 150 gram (1/2 cup) of cooked or steamed pumpkin / squash (or pumpkin puree)
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• Optional: a hand full of sultanas / raisins or (dried) cranberries

How To Make Pumpkin Oats Breakfast Bites:

• Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350F) – I often put the butter in there for a minute, so it can soften
• Mix all the dry ingredients: oats, pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, cinnamon, salt, and maybe sultanas
• Add the softened butter and stir / knead (I like to use my hands for this part, it just goes quicker) until there’s no bits of butter left
• Add the honey, squash and eggs
• To bake the bites in, I like using a silicon baking tray for cupcakes – but you can make little balls out of them, or bake them like cookies – whatever you prefer.
  I use a bit spoon for scooping the mass up, and a smaller spoon for scooping it out of my bigger spoon. It goes fastest that way!

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the top looks well-baked and brown.

There are many variations to this recipe on the Leelalicious website. I like the Apple Pie cookies a lot too!

Whoops! After writing this recipe, I discovered I hadn’t actually taken any pictures of the pumpkin oats breakfast bites. I guess I’ll be making new ones fairly soon… just for the pictures, of course!