Hello! I thought I would take a slight deviation from cakes and patisserie to chat about one of my other passions - porridge. I think I’ve always been a fan of porridge, I remember spooning copious amounts of golden syrup into my porridge as a child and rather than stirring it in, I’d let sink to the bottom and eat the somewhat boring top layer before gleefully hitting a goldmine of syrupy goodness at the bottom of my bowl. To this day golden syrup is one of my favourite porridge toppings, of course it has to be Tate and Lyle, any other brand is an abomination.
Despite my childhood love affair there was a period of my life that had a sad lack of porridge but I really got back into it after visiting Grød in Copenhagen about 6 years ago. Grød is a restaurant that exclusively sells porridge, it really opened my eyes to the many possibilities and turned me into a hardcore porridge fan.
After getting into porridge and whilst working at Pollen Bakery I introduced the great Pollen Porridge Off, every day a different member of the team would make porridge for staff breakfast, it was a lot of fun, some of the porridge we ate during that time got pretty crazy, with someone even making their own soy milk for the cause. Most of our porridges from this time are still under my porridge highlight on Instagram if you fancy a peak, I think my favourite from that time was a peach melba inspired porridge with roasted peaches, crème fraîche and raspberries.
Since I’m now working alone, developing recipes I find myself with a lot of interesting porridge toppings but it’s not as fun when you have no one to share the joy with so I thought I would create a virtual porridge club. I’ve started a group chat over on the Substack app for my subscribers to join, I’ll be sharing mine and my partner’s daily breakfasts, having general chit chats and I’d love to see your porridges too! If you can be bothered to download another (🙄) app I’d love to see you over there.
Although it’s fairly straightforward, I thought I’d share my base porridge recipe. I change the milk up from time to time but I really think the secret to a perfect porridge is a mixture of rolled oats and jumbo oats, jumbo oats add a nice bit of texture while rolled oats give it that classic mushy texture. Although for most of my recipes not using scales is sacrilege it’s not really necessary for porridge, I just use whatever receptacle I can find that seems to be the right size. When it comes to milk any milk works, I change mine up depending on how I’m feeling, sometimes I do 50:50 milk to water if I’m in the mood for something a bit lighter.
Porridge Recipe
*These measurements are in volume not grams!*
1 part oats, I use 50:50 rolled to jumbo
2 parts milk,
Pinch salt
Chuck it all in a pan, cook it on a low heat until boiling and your preferred texture, I like mine on the looser side. Add whatever toppings you like.
Can't wait to be part of the porridge club!!! I love mine with dark chocolate, pear or strawberries, toasted flaked almonds and lot of ground cinnamon! 😋😋😋