Breakfasts To Make While You Sleep

Getting out of bed can be a struggle at any time of year, but especially in January. It’s cold, it’s dark, you’re missing the lie-ins you enjoyed over Christmas, you’re tired and battling with fellow commuters on your way to work is the last thing you want to do. The temptation to press the snooze button or call in sick and pull the duvet over your head can be all too great.

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But if your breakfast is ready and waiting for you and could end up ruined unless you drag yourself out of bed, that’s motivation, surely? Making yourself a healthy, tasty breakfast while you sleep is possibly one of the greatest life hacks of all time and just what you need to coax yourself out of bed in January.

You know those cartoons where the smell of cooking bacon lures even the grumpiest of folk from their slumber? That’ll be you if you put your slow cooker to good use and switch it on overnight so you’ve got a gorgeous brekkie to wake up to. Here’s what to put in it:

You don’t need a special breadmaker to bake your own bread – you can in fact make it in your slow cooker. Do this overnight, and the unbeatable aroma of freshly baked bread will tempt you out of bed in the morning, along with the knowledge that you’ll be able to enjoy a hot slice of buttered/jammed/marmalade-d/peanut buttered toast made by your own fair hands (slow cooker).

Baked by an Introvert has a great recipe for slow-cooked bread. It takes just a few hours to make, so set the timer on your slow cooker for a couple of hours before you want to wake up, and there’ll be a golden loaf of bread waiting for you in the morning, as if by magic.

Stew doesn’t have to just be served with dumplings and roast potatoes and sit in a gravy, and it doesn’t have to just be an evening meal, you can eat it for breakfast too (maybe without the dumplings and roasties though). We suggest following My Fussy Eater’s recipe for sausage and butterbean stew, but we propose adding a few extra ingredients for a stew inspired by a traditional full English breakfast.

Pop all the ingredients in your slow cooker along with mushrooms, chopped bacon, extra tomatoes and feel free to swap the butterbeans for classic baked beans if you’d rather. This brekkie is essentially just meat, veg, beans and tomato sauce, so it’s a brilliant healthy way to start the day too.

Porridge is undoubtedly a healthier breakfast option than muffins, but there’s no reason you can’t enjoy both at the same time (kind of) if you try out Dishing Out Health’s recipe for blueberry muffin-inspired porridge.

The recipe pads out the oats with some extra quinoa, so if one of your 2018 goals was to get to grips with trendy foods and try new things, this is the perfect opportunity. It also proposes using coconut oil for a healthier twist on classic porridge, lemon zest and fresh blueberries for a zingy burst of flavour.

Knowing there’s cake-inspired food waiting for us is always a guaranteed way to get us out of bed in the morning.

Homemade flapjacks are a much healthier alternative to shop-bought breakfast bars, which are often covered in chocolate and packed full of preservatives. But we don’t all necessarily have the time to bake a batch every Sunday evening ready for the week.

We can, however, find a few moments to pop the ingredients for these mango, pumpkin seed and oat bars from Baking Queen 74 into the slow cooker. They provide a perfect hit of sweetness to give you a boost on those mornings when savoury simply won’t do.

Shakshuka, a baked Middle-Eastern dish generally made from tomatoes, eggs, beans and spinach, is another really nutritious breakfast/brunch option. If you don’t have the time to prepare the ingredients and wait for it to bake in a morning, do your prep the night before, following The Cook Report’s lead.

Her recipe includes chorizo, which you could of course switch up for standard sausage or leave the meat out altogether, and you can do what you like about the feta; add it/don’t/use a different variety of cheese/write your name in it – it’s up to you.

Having any of these recipes waiting for us in the kitchen would be enough to get us out of bed in the mornings and make the long winter a little more bearable, providing you with the strength to tackle the gym/work/other people.