Make Breakfast a Treat This Half-Term

After six weeks of early starts and battling with the kids to get ready for school after a long summer of lie-ins and letting them run free, it’s finally half-term. Go on, breathe a well-deserved sigh of relief. A whole week of no school run, catching up on sleep – if the kids will let you – and allowing the routine to go out of the window.

This means breakfast doesn’t have to be the usual rushed affair and you can spend more time preparing it and eating together as a family too. If you usually serve up a healthy brekkie, it won’t do too much harm to stray from this on a few half-term mornings. Also, bear in mind that if your kids have had their sweet fix early on, they’re less likely to be bothering you for extra sugary snacks throughout the rest of the day.

Here’s our pick of the best indulgent half-term breakfasts, with a couple of Halloween-themed suggestions thrown in too for good measure:

Pancakes don’t have to just be a Shrove Tuesday treat. If your kids can’t get enough of them each February, but you never usually have the time to make them in a busy week, spoil them with pancakes for breakfast during half-term.

Thick American-style pancakes can feel like more of a treat than thin crepes, and Amy’s Healthy Baking has a super yummy recipe for fluffy buttermilk pancakes. Her mixture features fat-free natural yoghurt, making the end result lighter than most.

These provide a great starting point before adding your favourite toppings. You could even make breakfast extra special by preparing a choice of sweet and savoury toppings and setting up your own mini pancake bar. Let the kids pick from maple syrup and bacon, classic lemon and sugar, or chocolate sauce, and encourage them to add some berries for an extra pop of taste and goodness.

Potato waffles are a tasty addition to a classic fry-up, but Belgian-style waffles make a gorgeous breakfast in themselves. You could stack them up and bury them under a pile of syrup, but you could also try to make them a little healthier, taking inspiration from A Mummy Too.

Her recipe for fruity wholemeal waffles feels indulgent – it’s waffles, after all! – but as it uses wholemeal flour, honey and a selection of fruit, it actually makes for a pretty nutritious breakfast for all the family. Use your Tefal Snack Collection to get the perfect waffle effect.

Pop tarts – sugary thin pastry layers covered in sticky sweet icing and sprinkles – have become an increasingly popular breakfast option for kids in the UK. But as parents are likely to have noticed, the branded versions can be pretty pricy, with many imported from the US, where they first gained popularity. And eating that much sugar first thing in the morning can be too much for mums and dads to deal with!

However, making your own pop tarts is fairly straightforward, allows you to monitor how much sugar is going into your kids, and you can do them in any flavour you choose.

Smitten Kitchen has an easy-to-follow recipe for plain pop tarts, which you can then customise to your kids’ preferences. Drizzle with chocolate sauce and sprinkles for those with a serious sweet tooth, or top with flavoured yoghurt and dried fruit for a slightly healthier option.

Do you ever make eggy bread? French toast is essentially a fancier, sweeter version, typically sprinkled with sugar and berries. If you don’t add too much sugar, this can be a fairly nutritious start to the day. But as it’s half-term and we’re letting ourselves indulge a little before school starts again, try out this idea for French toast stuffed with chocolate spread from Love and Lemons.

Baked in the oven, these sugar-filled sandwiches would also make a great dessert – imagine a super sweet, sticky, chocolatey bread and butter pudding and you’ll be along the right lines.

For most schools, Halloween falls during half-term this year, so you might want to get even more creative with your breakfasts and incorporate some spooky surprises. Swirl a spoonful of jam through a bowl of porridge to give the illusion of blood, or invest in a packet of Halloween-themed sprinkles and add them to waffles and pancakes for a celebratory October 31st breakfast.

Make breakfast an occasion this half-term while you’ve got the chance – just make sure you get straight back to healthy brekkies when school starts again!