We recently had people over for brunch. I chopped fruit for salad and mixed batter for corn fritters the night before. I made punch. I made sure the floor was clean. Ish. (Hey, I have small children, shrug) But the simplest thing of the entire brunch-a-rama, excluding blowing up balloons when the Young got Restless, was the humble but charming yoghurt pot. It stole the show! I had made them for the kids but I noticed one of the grown-ups tucking into them and the next day I cleaned up the leftover pots. Well, I tried, but B1 elbowed me out of the way in a move that makes me worry for anyone who is lining up for concert tickets near her, in about 15 years.

What IS it about a yoghurt pot? They really are ridiculously simple. I didn’t even make my own yoghurt (you can learn how to do that here!) or grow my own fruit. I guess that might be exactly what I love about them – the EASE. Brunch dates are wonderful but breakfast is one of those meals that has to come together all at the same time, often needing to be fresh and hot at the same time. That takes a special kind of someone to make that happen. I think her last name might be Stewart. Mine isn’t.

Yoghurt pots have the advantage of being perfectly portable. Give a person a spoon and they can stand, sit, dilly-dally over it for quite some time and it’s not going to lose its heat or slip off a plate. Young people can (literally) handle them. Personally, I use old jam jars for adult versions and baby food jars for kids versions.

You have to see those layers, you see. Layers are the trick. Good, thick, creamy yoghurt at the base, something sweet on top of that and something textural on top of that. My most recent version had greek yoghurt on the bottom, raspberries with a little sugar in the middle and choc chip cookie crumbs (from this recipe I’d made earlier in the week) plus naughty shavings of raspberry-white chocolate. But can you imagine the possibilities? I did:

Pineapple + crushed toasted pinenuts and a sprig of mint

Peach + strudel crumb

Honey + toasted walnut pieces

Stewed plum + crushed cinnamon biscuits

Ginger syrup + maple toasted oats + lemon zest

And the imagining goes on!

I was tempted to consult the holy grail of flavour combinations that served as divine inspiration when I wrote The Colour of Tea – The Flavour Thesaurus by  Niki Segnit – but I might not ever write another book if I do that, the book is so darn distracting and yoghurt pots so damn charming.

There is one pesky problem with them, though. They’re gone too quickly.

Did you have a great brunch this weekend? Which of the brunch foods charms the pants off of YOU?

HUGS, Hannah x